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Thirst For Coltan Fueling African Conflict
MetaPhyzx writes "According to an article put forth by the Toward Freedom website, the metallic ore known as columbite-tantalite or coltan for short is fueling conflict in central Africa. The relevance to us who read news for geeks: Coltan is in quite a few consumer electronics; the article references the Sony Playstation series." As reader fahrvergnugen points out in the comments below, there's reason to more than doubt the currency of the claims in the above-linked article, as outlined in a post at Joystiq.
How dare you say this! Apologize now to those good and heroic leaders of Africa lie Mugabe for things like slavery. Because all white people are guilty of slavery untill the end of times.
(This is not a troll, this is polically correct)
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
Really, who gives a shit anymore? If it's not this, it would be diamonds, gold, oil, or something else. Hell, if it wasn't somethign else they would just kill each other for the hell of it. Africa is one big hell hole and noting is going to change that in the next 200 years.
Nothing to see here.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
It's not the consumers of the world's fault that the Africans have absolutely no respect for the concept of rule of law or privet property, and are driven by greed to covet whatever they can sell.
The correct saying should be "anytime a material of value is found in Africa, the locals will murder each other to steal it and sell it." this is true of minerals on the international market, as well as their neighbors corn on the domestic market. People in other nations shouldn't feel bad for profiting from bad government on the part of Africans.
That would be something I agree on. The way I see it there is only two ways the world could solve Africa's problems, with force or ignore it.
The first solution requires an all out land invasion. Going in and tearing out all the old structures, beliefs, and basically bringing peace to Africa at the barrel of a gun. How well do you think this would work?
Next solution would be to basically wall off Africa, noting and nobody goes in or out. Cut them off from the rest of the world. Famine, war, and plague will pretty much take care of the rest.
Yes, it's heartless and pretty fucking sick but its the best I can think of. We've poured hundreds of billions of dollars of aid in to Africa over the last 60 years and all it has done is make it worse. They can't feed themselves but yet they continue to breed like flies forcing use to bring in more aid. AIDS is running ramped in Africa but yet they continue ignore all attempts to control it. And when they are not starving or dying of a disease they are shooting each other and fighting countless land wars over really nothing.
If we cut them off now from any outside sources they would be forced to figure out their own problems. And that is a main part of the problem. They don't have to deal with it because the west always comes to the rescue.
Millions will die if we cut them off, that is true. But what happens in 10 or 30 years when we can no longer afford to send aid to Africa. How many millions more will die that shouldn't have ever been born?
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
And I would have to say that you are part of the problem then. What is it exactly that you are doing in Nigeria? You may think that you are helping them but in reality you are not. All you are doing is teaching them that if something is wrong someone from the outside will come in and fix it.
That applies to the people and the governments of Africa. They know that if they get hungry enough there will be boat load of gain in unending supplies coming from everywhere. The people know this and, worse, their leaders know this. Their leaders know they don't have to have any responsibility to their people because someone like you will do it for them. So that they can continue their little wars and actions to keep them in power.
You may think you are helping these people but you are not. You are just teaching them to be dependent on someone else. When an African child falls people like you rush in, pick it up, sooth it's tears, and tell it that it's going to be all right. When what you need to do is stand aside and let that child pick it's own self up or let other African pick it up.
Supporting World Peace Through Nuclear Pacification
First off, the jag-off who wrote this story is an unabashed NIMBY liberal, who in order to make an argument, abandons all semblance of common sense. Second, this story takes place in Africa. In the Congo. They are Black people who live there. This species of hominid is incapable of reason, civility, social grace, cognitive recognition, abstract thought, independent governance, among numerous other shortcomings as a race of people. Please do not assume that these people are capable of establishing and maintaining and Western norms of Jurisprudence. They are not Homo sapiens Caucasus but homo Negroid that are as far away from whites as chimpanzees are from baboons. Now before all you slashdotters get your panties in a bunch, you need to illustrate an example in the world where blacks have met or exceeded western white social ideals. Stop holding them up to ideals to which they are incapable of meeting.