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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.
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