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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.
Read the freaking article. Sony forced Coltan prices up something like 400%, turning something that was just another ore in some African country into something very valuable.
If it weren't for Sony's actions, there would have been no economic reason for them to force children into mines to get the ore.
But Sony did force the price up, and children were sent to mine the ore.
Sure, others share some blame, but don't try to paint Sony as blameless. They knew what they were doing. They did it anyway. If they're willing to put rootkits on your computer, "enhance" Blu-ray breaking it for older players, use the PS3 to force Blu-ray into people's living rooms, do you really think they'd hesitate to send a couple of children to their deaths to shave a few cents off a PS2?
Yep. New stamp. That'll fix it.
It appears your "/sarcasm off" is about WMD.
Yes, yes it was about WMD. I see you have also taken English and can read and write, really amazing what they can teach a chimp to do now a days.
Nigeria has huge oil reserves and they are a major producer
I said Congo/Kenya/Nigeria, which all produce rare minerals, fossil fuel, or in Kenya's case exotic goods such as coffee.
Is it customary for your comments to be so ill informed?
Is it customary for you to troll /.?
this is just racist and wrong.
how has this not been modded troll? tl;dr?