Slashdot Mirror
The Congo Tantalum Rush
Logic Bomb writes: "The New York Times Magazine takes a look at the mining of a muddy substance called coltan. Once refined, it becomes tantalum, the crucial ingredient in capacitors. To put it simply, the modern high-tech world depends on this stuff. And while most of us have images of squeaky-clean chip factories and such -- in marked contrast to sleazy textile sweatshops -- it turns out that this industry has a dark side that takes a major toll on human lives. Definitely worth a read."
Spot the difference between USA and Central africa right here. In Central africa, no company is even concerned that that might happen to them.
My Karma: ran over your Dogma
StrawberryFrog
>Sure, the story sounds appaling -- notably the
>way Mama D. exploits her workers. But do you
>really think any other business is different?
>You like having a car, right?
Am I the only one who noticed the right wing slant of the article is more concerned that Mama D employs prostitutes, than with the environmental tragedy of mining in a rainforest?
Or even that mining in the Congolese National Park is illegal, not to mention outrageous?
What I get from the article is that we should be alarmed at the prostituion business going on in the mining town... The parallels between the African mining industry and the early days of the USAn mining industry probably don't stop just with worker exploitation and prostitution...
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
We could let this continue to occur. This is most likely to happen. Or we could form a private army, funded and outfitted by all the major corporations that require chip tech including Lockheed Martin, Intel, Microsoft, et cetera, and march against the capital of the Democratic Republic of Congo. We would seize it in an amazing tour de force and control the stream of Tantalum. We would be fair and benevolent leaders and our people would admire us. We would give them shiny baubles and bags of rice and they would treat us like gods.
Umm, what the hell are you disagreeing with? You just told me to to pull my head out of my ass, then proceeded to reiterate my point exactly.
"We obviously need a new moderation category: (-1, Woo-fucking-hoo)" --Mr. AC
Instead of blaming the corporations that exploit the workers, ask yourselves why the governments in the host countries like the Congo don't have any labor standards. Then ask yourself just how often are the governments in countries like the Congo actually willfully allowing stuff like this to happen. We import from China all the time because we have anti-robotics culture that would go nucking futz if many of our manufacturers used mostly robots on their assembly lines because that would "cost jobs." The reality is that we can't have both cheap goods and high standards in the lowest of the low jobs in industrial manufacturing. The only way in most cases to eliminate the need for cheap labor is to use robotics and of course the luddites in society (the majority of society?) are vehemently opposed to using robots for production even though it would often give us a freer society and cheaper goods and services.
They've undertaken huge clean-up projects at most of their bases, plan every exercise & project for minimal environmental impact, and try to stay in strict compliance with US and state or host-nation environmental laws. Unlike many corporations that would rather pay the fines for non-compliance when it's cheaper.
I speak from personal experience, in Air Force Civil Engineering. The construction projects I was involved in used high efficiency HVAC systems, low energy lighting, motion sensors that automatically turn lights off when rooms aren't in use, super-insulated buildings, toilets that use less water volume per flush, etc. These things all cost more up front, but have lower long-range operating costs. Now that I'm working in the private sector, commercial & residential clients forgo these systems for more traditional, environmentally unfriendly systems.
Energy conservation wasn't even spoken about in the media in recent years, until Califonia's self inflicted energy crisis. The military has been heavily promoting it internally for several years.
There was even a
In the 1960's, the Americans waded in. To fight Communism and secure access to cobalt and copper, the Central Intelligence Agency helped bring about the assassination of Congo's first democratically elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba. That was followed by three decades of White House coddling of his successor, Mobutu Sese Seku, Africa's most famous billionaire dictator, who set a poisoned table for the chaos that followed his eventual overthrow in 1997.
The crux of the matter is that when you talk about the poor conditions in just about any region of Africa (aside from the extreme north), almost all o fthose poor conditions did not exist until industrialized European countries and the United States decided to change them into colonies or banana republics to benefited their own economy at the expense of the African ones.
"We obviously need a new moderation category: (-1, Woo-fucking-hoo)" --Mr. AC
They also have a high failure rate in use (especially infant mortality). Somebody once told me that Motorola didn't allow tantalum caps in pagers simply because too many of them spontaneously die. Ceramics cost more, but the savings on warranty returns and poor customer experience paid for it.
It's only just now that ceramics with a competitive density are available, and they are still rather costly and availability still isn't good. Even then, the same advances that improve ceramics also work for tantalums, which have been getting steadily better too. The move to alternatives is part of the supply improvement, but there's also the fact that cell phones are slumping and manufacturers increased capacity.-- ;-)
Kuro5hin.org: where the good times never end.
This process is not an example of globalization at work. It is advanced-industrialized countries extracting resources from poorer countries and leaving little in return. Though I am not attempting to place a value judgement upon it in this comment, I must point out that arguments which attempt to defend globalization are not valid here.
And here are the articles from NPR and the United Nations Security Council Report (PDF)
These were also months ago....
Evidently it wasn't interesting then as my submission got rejected.... the heck with Karma...
Capacitors have been around a long time, but capacitors made from tantulum instead of some other material are somewhat more recent.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
The author even admits their bias in this paragraph:
Later a scientist offers a rational viewpoint:
The overall conclusion I draw from the article is this:
The Congo is in political and military turmoil right now, which has little to do with the tantalum mining.
Some Congolese are capitalizing on the tantalum demand and raising their standard of living, while others squander their money on prostitutes.
The "mining" is causing little environmental damage; the people are just digging holes by hand (it's not strip mining).
Another anti-globalization bleeding heart liberal journalist is blaming everyone and everything but the real cause of the problems.
Mainly because the Balkans is right in the EU's backyard, remember we were only bombing across the Adriatic about 150 miles from Italy. All this going on in their backyard was a disgrace, so you limit the fallout.
The Balkans has been a thorn in the side of western Europe for centuries and was the trigger for WWI, so I guess they want to finally sort the place out.
Africa is seen as distant in some countries including the US, and they doesn't really express much interest in what's going on there, including genocide. However some countries have taken a belated interest in Africa, Britian returned to their former colony of Sierra-Leone to originally free some rebels, I think they lost 3-4 soldiers in this exercise.
It seems they've stayed on to help fight back the rebels and kit out then train government troops. According the BBC World Service, people in Britain have labelled this as neo-colonialism and have questioned why their forces are even out there, since they're overstretched enough. But peculiarly, the Sierra-Leone government seems to welcome of their presence.
On a related note, what's the justification for a Western country to go these countries, fight a resource intensive war, loose men, spend millions building infrastructure (remember there's no slaves to do like before) then get kicked out and denigrated as oppressors?
The above is basically what happened to the British Empire, sure it wasn't nice, but the oft used reasoning comparisons makes it sound worse than Nazi Germany, why would any country desire that labelling on their character for centuries?
Besides, there's plenty of tantalumin in Australia, it's just more expensive to extract it because of higher labor costs, but those costs are certainly cheaper than annexing some country.
http://archive.nytimes.com/2001/08/12/magaz ine/12C OLTAN.html
I've never had a NYTimes account and this works for me.
All right, AC. Please tell the crowd here just how -you- personally have altered your lifestyle in order to minimise the impact on the environment. I hope that you do not drive a car, live in a house with lights and air conditioning, use a computer or eat food that you have not grown and processed yourself, because if you do, you are impacting the environment.
Absolutely right. If those with power wish to keep that power at any price, they will until their power is taken away from them. In the case of corporations, this has to come from the shareholders deciding that they won't support any company which does these kinds of things. Obviously, that is not going to happen, there will always be a lot of people who, if given the option, will be glad to profit from the misfortunes of others. It has always been, and sadly will always be. So that leaves the government. This has to come from our votes. We have to vote for people who will not allow corporations to make slaves of the third world, or be slave masters themselves. And while we're at it, can we lock up the executives of companies for human rights violations? That's a decent deterrant for the CEO of Intel or Nike. No more sweatshops or you will go to prison.
The REAL sam_at_caveman_dot_org is user ID 13833.
For all the percieved evils of the Soviets they (to the best of their "internationalist" doctrine) tried to help bring African countries up from the misery.
CIA (and MI5 and whatever the fsck French call their spy shop) killed Patrice Lumumba and many other leaders in countries like Angola and Mozambique for daring to cuddle up to the Commies instead the "benevolent" colonial masters. But Soviet enthusiasm ran out in 1980's and Soviet Union itself ran out in 1990's.
What's really awkward is that with the tremendously valuable natural resources of the Congo (this article's focus, diamonds), it could have a standard of living nearing that of the richer middle eastern countries. Too bad western exploitation ruined the country. Have you heard about the new movie about the assasination of the Congolese president? How accurate is that to what you hear from your friends?
It's the only industry they have. It's the only way to make money. Yes it's unpleasant, and they're probably being shafted by the First World, but that's just life.
Sometimes you do just have to spend your working day waist-deep in manky water rooting through mud.
If you force the price of tantalum ore up by increasing the amount paid to the miners, the companies that buy it will go somewhere else.
If that happens, the mines will close. Now the mines may not be very environment-friendly, but if they close, what are the miners going to do? Get jobs in Gap and Starbucks?
If you were not so well armed, you USians would be the funniest breed in the world, even without Dennis Miller or Dana Carvey.
Ive been ther a few times, I lived there for a while. I was amazed when I saw someone on TV or at an University setting claiming that the U.S. should not do business (actually *buy* things) from nations that did not respect basic human rights. Though thats not what the article says, Id say it falls in the same broad category of narrow perspective.
Sweatshops? Is that what do you call a place where one has to work for more than 12 hours a day under pressure? Like a law firm in D.C. or some programming shops in CA? No matter these guys are working so as to be able to afford their condos or wine&dine twice a week, its still food and housing, only at first-world standards. Not too different from minework in Congo, given ones expectations. Thanks God I have to work only 8 hours a day, if I ever do more than that its because I want to.
How about human rights? Where I live an employee is entitled 30 days of vacation every 12 month period. Oh, you dont in the U.S., would that be a human right violation? Children are allowed to work here after they are 16, is that a HR violation? Whos to say? You think its fine to show a kids face on TV and screw him for the rest of his life if he has been charged with some felony even before conviction? You cant do it here even after conviction. You think you live in a free country? I never felt so oppressed and watched and under someones monitoring as I did while in the U.S.. Granted, I was living in D.C., but I think the average urban USian is yet to experiment real freedom. Maybe that would explain their behaviour when they come over... I could do this the whole day (even without mentioning U.S. foreign policy), but the point is: you have to broaden your horizons! Stop judging everyone under your values. They are good, very good indeed, but they dont work all over the world! Youll only profit from that.
The kicker about Hunter's Point is that the city is really having to lean on the Navy hard to get them to clean the place up. They only this year quietly admitted the existence of the radioactive goop. Before, we thought it was just PCBs!
If only I could trade old cap's for the "affections" of young women...
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I spent a year in Iraq looking for WMD and all I found was this lousy sig.
Hate to say it, but technically speaking, the article and the post are both way off. Tantalum isn't "the crucial ingredient in capacitors", and the electronics industry doesn't "depend on this stuff" at all. Most caps are made with ceramic materials (e.g. clays) or paper soaked in an electrolytic solution, but there are many other dielectrics available, like polypropylene, mica, etc., each with their own favourable characteristics.
The nice thing about tantalums is that they are very small for the amount of capacitance they have - hence their popularity in PDAs and celphones. But they're expensive, and polarised - you have to plug them in the right way, or they literally blow up. They also can't tolerate much overvoltage.
For the things that tantalums are most often used for (power-supply filtering), a kind of capacitor called multilayer ceramic actually works better. These are made mostly from nickel powder, and they're much cheaper and tougher. They're also non-polarised, which can reduce assembly costs, and they don't depend on hard-to-get tantalum powder.
Last year there was a shortage of tantalum powder, which made tantalum caps really hard to get. Now word is getting out that the new breed of multilayer ceramic chip caps can do just as well, people aren't using tantalums nearly as much as they were. I think this is the real reason for the tantalum ore crash.
"... Today, the valley is home to more EPA Superfund sites (29) than any other county in the nation, with the most notorious of those sites -- from a leaking tank at a Fairchild Semiconductor fabrication plant -- poisoning a well that served the south San Jose neighborhood of Los Paseos. A subsequent study by the state's Department of Health Services found 2.5 to three times the expected rate of miscarriages and birth defects among pregnant women exposed to the contaminated drinking water, leading to a lawsuit and multimillion-dollar settlement in 1986 with over 250 claimants...."
Full two-part story at Salon, 7/30/01 and 7/31/01:
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/07/30/almad en1/index.html
And we humans are self-aware enough to realize this is happening, yet are too incompetent and self-centered to do anything about it.
It's fscking pathetic.
I'll agree that there are definitely problems there, but whatever happened to objective journalism? From the first sentence, the author has convicted every cell phone user of some crime against humanity.
The article reads worse than some flamebait & troll posts I've seen here on Slashdot. Of course, it is in the NY Times, which is hardly an unbiased news source.
Well first of all, if you have the flu, the measles and the chicken pox all at once, you don't say "Hey, who cares if I catch pneumonia!" Just because you have lots of problems doesn't mean that it;s okay to have more.
If anything, the establishment of mining and factories will add stability to the region, since the companies want to protect their money and investment.
Secondly, did you actually read the article? There are no companies. There are no factories. And those mines are holes in the ground dug by people (roughly organized into "camps"). It's still anarchy, not good financial planning.
Besides, you only get to mine your natural resources once, then they're gone. The article says that the money from coltan mining is not going into infrastructure like schools and roads. So what happens when the coltan is gone? Evenyone's actually worse off than they started, because there's no more money to be made by mining, and you've gained nothing that can increase the country's wealth in the long run (like schools!) in return.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but hasn't the Congo been mined for diamonds for 100+ years now? Has it done any good? Why do you think the coltan situation will be different?
Dude, they're digging holes. Even the guy running the park said the impact wasn't really that great.
ReadThe ReflectionEngine, a cyberpunk style n
Tribal societies don't count? They got along fine as farmers and hunter gatherers. Colonization over complicated things, and left vacuums that are now the anarchistic conditions we see today. The point is that *other* countries were the ones fucking things up. The original inhabitants were not so sophisticated, but they knew not to destroy their own back yard.
"We obviously need a new moderation category: (-1, Woo-fucking-hoo)" --Mr. AC
Umm - can anybody name ANY 19th-20th Century Italian colonization effort that succeeded? I can't. Can anybody name a German or British one that failed?
Not necessarily. Now instead of starving this year in a lush environment, they will starve next year in a ruined environment.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
congo and it's people provide the goods that the high tech industry wants, and they get richly awarded(by their standards, anyway) for it.
To me, i see no losers in this exchange.
And don't forget the consumer, who benefit from the better technology and cheaper prices.
Everybody is happy.
Tantalum is used in Tantalum capacitors, electronic devices that hold an electrical charge.
The article doesn't seem to mention that Aluminum capacitors can be used instead. Aluminum capacitors are larger and cheaper than Tantalum, and they may have significantly more inductance. But, in most cases thet can be substituted. Usually the only problem is finding the space on a circuit board.
Bush's education improvements were
Sure, the story sounds appaling -- notably the way Mama D. exploits her workers. But do you really think any other business is different? You like having a car, right? Hundreds if not thousands of Mama D.'s went into the production of it. They're called entrepreneurs, and we'd all be living in the dirt without them.
The workers are thrilled to make $80 a day -- it's 400 times what they'd make otherwise. They're overjoyed to trade some muck they dug up for whores and antibiotics and beer and cash. Nobody's forcing them to do it -- they can always go back to whatever they used to do. Without someone "exploiting" them, they'd be bored and poor.
If you're really concerned about this kind of thing, how about asking the guy who cleans the the toilets at work how much he gets paid to do it. Or the people who pick the oranges so you can have a morning glass of OJ. Or just about anything else you enjoy.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
I lived in what is now the DRC for three years, and the standard of living there is such that few North Americans can actually conceive what it is like.
The average annual income is $110 US and most families have to have a garden otherwise they wouldn't be able to eat. People think nothing of walking 10-20 miles a day to work and back. If you can afford a small scooter then you're considered a wealthy man. In villages, it is considered sheer luxury to have a tin roof on your mud hut. For most families any kind of vehicle other than an old bicycle is completely out of the question, and running water is something to dream about.
In such living conditions, any work (even nasty, hard work) that pays well can be a real relief when you have a dozen mouths at home (wife, kids, cousins, parents, etc). I'm not saying that its great, and I think that things could definately be improved, but its definately better than some of the other options that they have
The US Military and CIA are funding the drug and tantalum murders, providing weaponry and equipment for guerrillas throughout Latin America, as well as electronic monitoring equipment that allows right wing candidates to monitor their opponents.
Link to CIA/Military involvment on The Center for Public Integrity.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
I imagine it is against the rules of combat or the geneva convention or whatever it is. We also tried unsuccesfully to either commit or fund assasination attempts against Castro and Hussein, not to mention that we just broke the ABM and Kyoto treaties so it's not like we give a flip about international law anyway. Oh yeah, there's also the whole Sklyarov situation - who knows how many international laws we're breaking with that one.
Racist and false.
You haven't the foggiest idea what you're talking about. None. You are a typical uneducated spoiled pampered suburban neoliberal slob with no knowledge of history other than the occasional tidbits you manage to pick up from Hollywood movies.
Here's a bibliography for you. Go read some of the works cited, if you can find any that don't exceed your reading level. Then come back and express an informed opinion.
This is not exactly news anymore. The Industry Standard had an article about the topic on June 11: Guns, Money and Cell Phones
The problem is the notion of "postcolonialism." The cultural elite have decided that any level of interference with other cultures is bad. They don't realize that there is a great deal of middle between the wholesale colonial exploitation of the 19th-20th c., and the cold-blooded hands off approach, which has left millions of people at the hands of a few cruel dictators, with poverty, disease, and starvation in attendance.
You'be been living in a dream world if you ever thought that the computer industry was squeaky clean. Silicon Valley has the highest density of EPA Superfund sites in the USA. Check out this lovely map of Silicon Valley pollution. If you live in this neighborhood, you'll get cancer for sure. Computer production has never been clean. In fact, it's nearly as dirty as the military. The manufacturers have simply been able to put on a "clean" face for the world.
Change 'www' to 'archive' and have a nice day.
Liberty in your lifetime
I'm naked, but I guess you still might be right right. I was probably produced under less than ideal conditions.
[sigh]
If you had bother reading the article, you would know that innocent farmers are being murdered so rebel gangs can gain access to their tantalum rich land.
These rebel gangs then sell the product to American and European corporations.
Sounds like a major toll to me. But you're right, none of those farmers are starving now. Enjoy your electronic devices.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Wow.
Pull your head out of your ass and think for a minute.
When Europeans started colonizing Africa, many Europeans lived in a condition of squalor similar to conditions in African cities today. Ever read Charles Dickens?
Africa has been a poor place for a long time. A burgeoning population combined with a lack of water and arable land are the source of poverty in many regions of Africa.
In other regions, like Kenya and the former colony of Rhodesia more political factors come to play. The theft and abuse perpetrated by dictators who took advantage of the vacuum created during the pullout of colonial government set the stage for decades of warlords and conflict.
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Anyway as an African, I would like to say that although the article probably accurately conveyed the realities of Eastern Congo, that place is majorly F*****ED up even by African standards, because of the long running civil war and lack of ANY govermental infrastructure. Many neighbouring countries such as Tanzania, Kenya and even Uganda are a lot more stable.(OK Uganda has some rebels in the Northern part of the country but it is still much much better than Eastern Congo overall. Congo is the worst case scenario.) For example in the Arusha and Shinyanga regions of Tanzania we have exactly this same kind of mining going on but at least the miners aren't terrorized by random soldiers,(Ok, so they probably have to pay a "commission" to some people... I didn't say it was perfect) the trade is somewhat regulated, and foreign companies that invest are monitored and can work peacefully.
So my basic point is that the lawlessness in Eastern Congo is a sad situation, if this tantalum had been found elsewhere it might have been very beneficial. e.g Botswana has managed to benefit greatly from its diamonds.
Also Congo was a very artificial creation of Colonial powers with many different ethnic groups that don't always get along. This makes a viable political system somewhat difficult. The same problems plague many African states, some more than others.
Here is a good website for on African current events: http://allafrica.com
Rob in Dar Es Salaam
The only reason all cover-ups appear to fail is that you never hear about the ones that succeed.
How many coders and lawyers do you know that make $90,000 in a country where the cost of living is $1 US per day?
Is there some reason that all wages should be compared to an absolute value versus a relative purchasing power? Even in the grand old US of A we have different costs of living in various parts of the country. Do we complain that an engineer in Iowa is making $50,000 and the same job is paying $90,000 in the Silicon Valley? Nope. Know why? Cost of living!
Now you know that would just cause the bushmen you believe to be sparse and to have long since integrated into society to adopt the son of one of the current industry representatives as their messiah, resulting in them taking over the world riding elephants, letting hurricanes into mid-west USA and central Asia with nuclear weapons, and shouting loud enough to crack stone floors.
You wouldn't happen to be a grossly obese man who floats around on suspensors, would you?
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You'd be surprised at the broadband connection available to things crawling around in your hair.
With all due respect, you are out to lunch on this one.
From the Article:
In the 1960's, the Americans waded in. To fight Communism and secure access to cobalt and copper, the Central Intelligence Agency helped bring about the assassination of Congo's first democratically elected prime minister, Patrice Lumumba. That was followed by three decades of White House coddling of his successor, Mobutu Sese Seku, Africa's most famous billionaire dictator, who set a poisoned table for the chaos that followed his eventual overthrow in 1997.
The evil greedy capitalist colonial corporations are NOT helping the situation. Sure, they'll give them the bare minimum to keep them digging or to keep churning out Nike's but they will never allow them to achieve the stability that will allow them to choose not to be exploited.
You're using her as bait, Master!
Now your point about how farked up the place is before 'we' got there and how 'we're' a stabalizing influence, well taken. It's true that many places would be content to screw themselves for eternity and capi-colonialism stepping in simply changes the dynamic somewhat but doesn't nesc. create any *more* suffering (different, sure, but not more). People like killing other people. Still, the point is we *could* do better so maybe we *should*. Not just leave, but intervene more positviely. ...
closed minded is as closed minded does
One thing puzzles me: why do the cafeterias for the coltan mines always have a drink machine that doesn't work and a counter staff that takes off lunch at the same time as the rest of the workers?
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You'd be surprised at the broadband connection available to things crawling around in your hair.
A rare and expensive commodity is mined from central Africa and there are unsafe working conditions in the mines and violence over access to the deposits?
Gee, I'm surprised.
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You'd be surprised at the broadband connection available to things crawling around in your hair.
Tantalum caps are only one of the seemingly thousands or varieties of capacitors around. If they all went away today we could easily replace them with other varieties of capacitors. Sure tantalum caps are one of my favorite varieties because of their long life and their low leakage current but there not that essential and if you look at a lot of newer electronics you won't find any tantalums any way because there so dam expensive.
The Industry Standard had an article on this a couple months ago: http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,26784,00 .html.
To put it simply, the modern high-tech world depends on this stuff. And while most of us have images of squeaky-clean chip factories and such -- in marked contrast to sleazy textile sweatshops -- it turns out that this industry has a dark side that takes a major toll on human lives
The sad thing is I think you would be hard pressed to find ANY industry that doesn't depend on some "sleazy textile sweatshop" at some point. I would wager that most of us are wearing at least one piece of clothing produced under less than ideal conditions.
Lets also not forget that caps have been around for a hell of a lot longer than the "modern hi-tech industry".
Ad in classifieds: Pandora's Box (no box) $5
Now, I know that I'll probably be flamed to a crisp for this one, but I really have to say "Who cares?" After all, most people who read /. (I assume) come from the industrialized European countries and the United States. Let's all remember that the standard and style of living enjoyed in those countries is NOT the typical condition of existence for the majority of humanity EVER. Even at the height of Dynastic China and Imperial Rome, two of the most advanced ancient societies, the vast majority of the people lived in absolute squalor and filth, not knowing where their next meal was coming from, if there even was a next meal, etc. Slavery, robbery and murder were all common. Now here comes my admittedly controversial point: the vast majority of the world is still like that. The Congo basin is still like that. The evil greedy capitalist colonial corporations have nothing to do with it. There are all kinds of funky diseases, famines, and ethnic infighting in the area. If anything, the establishment of mining and factories will add stability to the region, since the companies want to protect their money and investment. In short, the next time you feel like whining about the plight of people in the third world, ask yourself "Do I want to live like that?" I suspect the answer is no, and if it is no, please don't stop the wheels of progress from helping them escape.
I'm an Angry Clam. You would be angry too if you were a ball of snot in a shell.
Actually something like this is the only way to save this country. Let me qualify this.
My best friend is born and grew up in Zaire (now the Congo). Her mother is from Zaire and her father is an American who went over in the Peace Corps and eventually become the owner of a diamond mine. Because of her I often hear the news from that country as well as the opinions of the few Congolese who happen to live in this country.
Less than 10 years ago the Congo had roads, electricity, hospitals, schools, an infrastructure. Now there is nothing. My friend describes it as "surreal" the way the country became "not a country" so quickly. Now it's so far gone they cannot recover on their own. Without some outside force strong enough to completely dominate the region nothing will change. It is my personal opinion that most Congolese who are not warlords would actually welcome an invasion from a European power. At least there would be less chance of being murdered by some "soldier" for what pitiful possesions you still own.
Yes I have heard too many times that wearing a better pair of boots than the soldier who confronts you is a capitol offense
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
In GDW's old role-playing game "2300AD", the tantalum was the primary element in the creation of FTL drives. The Congo became a power center and the nations of the world scrambled to get enough of the stuff, while the recently united African nations on the Congo region charged them out the ass.
When the game was written (late 80s sometime?) was all this going on?
ZOMG I WOULD LOVE TO KNOW ABOUT YOUR FEELINGS ON MACINTOSH VERSUS WINDOWS, VI VERSUS EMACS, AND HOW YOU'RE NOT A DORK
When you bought your computer, did you give the maufacturer the bare minumum to keep them selling computers, or did you pay an extra fee to help the copper and tantalum diggers?
Here is a short happy read of the events and effects of the events on the people of the Congo. Note that comment about being able to supply power for all of sothern Africa along with minerals and fertile land leave the impression they are far from being dirt poor. http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/aug2001/cong-a11 .shtml
This will continue happening, if not over this, then over Nike shoes, or who knows what's next. We read an article like this using our computers made on the backs of the third world, say "Oh that's terrible" then go back to depending on the cheap prices you pay for their sweat. The only way anything will change is for everyone to stop sitting on their hands and make a statement against this kind of activity.
Here in the US we depend on getting stuff dirt cheap even if that means hurting people in other countries. We're only willing to help people in third world countries if it will be beneficial to us (eg: Kuwait).
Everyone in the US (myself included) needs to take a step back and realize how much we are destroying the entire world in order to give ourselves comfortable lives.