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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."
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.
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
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
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...
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!
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.
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?
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.
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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
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.
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.
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
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".
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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.