Major Electronics Firms Support Ending Use of "Conflict Minerals"

tburton writes "The US House of Representatives yesterday released the Conflict Minerals Trade Act (HR 4128) to try and end the international trade of tungsten, tantalum and col-tan, the mining of which is accused of fueling violent rape and murder in eastern Congo. Since the very same minerals power the most popular consumer electronics from HP, Verizon, Nokia, RIM and Intel, the Information Technology Industry Council has quickly signed a statement of support. Advocacy groups are hopeful these commitments prove to be meaningful as consumers begin to question the end result of the supply chains powering their favorite gadget."

Comments

Hardly surprising

[jcrb]

Is this of any surprise that the companies don't really care where their materials come from as long as they are getting what they want at a price they want?

Public exposure and "naming names" is the only way to have an effect on this behavior, both so people know the effect of buying a product from certain companies as well as making the companies fearful of the bad PR that will come from using such materials

Re:Hardly surprising

[flyneye]

Gotta watch having one sided exposure. That seems to be the case in most "lets do good" campaigns. So lessee, we quit trading tungsten internationally, we have a shortage, machine tools can no longer make machines and industry crumbles here. In Africa however, since they have all the tungsten, have an industrial boom, environment and working conditions be damned. Now Africa is even worse for the people, do gooders here shot themselves and everyone else in the foot and there isn't enough tantalum to alloy into metal to make industry come back even if we could still machine products.
          Well I'm glad we could do the "right" thing. I just wanna see all the liberals come together, hold hands and sing "Kum Bah Yah" afterwards.

Re:Hardly surprising

[joaommp]

Well, they could care. I don't know about the other minerals, but at least tungesten can be mined from Portugal, where... well, let's say things don't work as they do in Congo.

Re:Hardly surprising

[Phil-14]

Not only that; there are a lot of unexploited Tungsten sources in the United States; one supposes they could stop nickel-and-diming to death extraction industries here and we could probably produce them a lot more cheaply than the Congo; doing business in a war zone is expensive.

I also just checked Wikipedia, and I think this subject is sufficiently non-controversial/political that they will give accurate information; it looks like China produces several times the amount of Tungsten as the rest of the world _combined_.

Re:Hardly surprising

[flyneye]

Still, this is just the beginning of legislation (a.k.a. just putting the head in). Did you ever know of legislation that wasn't eventually built on? It's a flip of the coin, perhaps the right will add to it later, perhaps the left. Then more piled on that. What will it be like years from now? Will this screw up industries and jobs with left legislation? Will this ruin the environment or enslave us with right legislation?
          The Congo needs to take care of the Congo. Revolt, flee, or make peace with itself. Kinda like wild animals other peoples countries need left alone to sink or swim, evolve or die. Bad things happen everywhere, we are only selective about rendering aid when it suits our financial interests. We can't do it all for everyone else or we will spread ourselves too thin and be resented for it.
      I'm glad to hear about Portugal, but what of the world to come?
        The World is bad in places just like its deep or high in places, dangerous in places. That's just the way it is. The illusion that you can do something about it to relieve your conscience is only a tool used to manipulate you for someone elses aspirations, good or evil, we end up used, reamed suckers.

Re:Hardly surprising

[Grishnakh]

How many of you use illegal drugs--which goes into the pocket of vicious and violent people.

The fault here lies solely with politicians, who have nonsensically made these drugs illegal. They tried banning drugs back in the 30s with Prohibition, and it didn't work. It created a huge black market, with lots of violence. Why do they keep trying to repeat history? Users are not to blame for the violence; only politicians and those who support them are.

If the government decided to ban ketchup one day, and this created a black market and violence, would you still blame ketchup consumers for the violence?

Re:Hardly surprising

[symbolset]

Mining of any kind is an environmental nightmare. I imagine globalization has international companies avoiding the practice within the jurisdiction of the EPA as much as they can.

Just like diamonds and oil

[tedgyz]

I'm sure it be just like other conflict industries. We will care about it just long enough until our next purchase. The unwashed masses would buy products made of dead baby carcasses.

Re:Just like diamonds and oil

[Lumpy]

But you can. DeBeers diamonds are sold everywhere. I have yet to see anyone stop the DeBeers Diamond company from selling their dead baby diamonds.

Plus consumers do not care, hey we have been trained by the same evil company that you dont love her if you dont have 2 months salary on her finger.

Personally, I believe that only a complete Idiot would do such a thing, but I see a lot of people that follow that like lemmings.

This will do nothing to end the "conflict".

[John Hasler]

The fighting is about politics, not minerals. This will just make everyone in the region poorer. The minerals will continue to come out albeit at a reduced rate while yet another layer of criminal politicians seize the opportunity to enrich themselves by falsifying the documents necessary to get the stuff on the legal market.

This is just more feelgood crap from the assholes in Washington.

Re:This will do nothing to end the "conflict".

[Lokinin]

The money do not go to the people, it goes to the military forces. This will control or at least decrease the violence that is supported by the money they get, since the income goes to the guerillas to support the maintenance of their weapons which will kill even more innocent people. This is a good thing. What is sick is that this decision was not made much earlier.

Re:This will do nothing to end the "conflict".

[hairyfeet]

Won't work since this is ultimately "I'm better than you and/or my God is better than yours! Jihad!" kind of deal, and deep built in hatred like that don't go away just from lack of weapons. Remember this is the same place where machete murders are quite common, and you don't get cheaper weapons that a machete.

Ultimately you can't "force" anyone to get along, love his neighbor, or anything decent like that. They have to want to stop the violence themselves. All this will do is help boost the black market for said minerals while doing jack and squat about the violence. remember these folks have been fighting for decades now. We can't change that anymore than we can get the Shia and the Sunni to "just play nice". Wish we could, but we can't, sorry.

Re:This will do nothing to end the "conflict".

[khallow]

This will control or at least decrease the violence that is supported by the money they get, since the income goes to the guerillas to support the maintenance of their weapons which will kill even more innocent people.

Why? What I'm hearing (in the discussion here) is that any such minerals are already being laundered to hide the source. My bet is that there will be zero impact in Congo. No reduction in rape and murder or military conflict. Instead, the only impact will be bureaucratic overhead for anyone doing business in the States. I oppose such frivolous regulation.

Just like conflict diamonds?

[Anonymous Coward]

This will work just as well as all of those useless "conflict diamond" resolutions that have accomplished nothing more than forcing DeBeers to launder its African blood diamonds through its "mines" in Canada.

The big miners will "discover" mines in some "friendly" country and just launder the stuff through them, just like they have done with diamonds.

*sigh*

Re:Just like conflict diamonds?

[qdaku]

You make it sound like all the diamond mines in Canada are a sham. What is with the quotations? I find that to be a very odd stance as I've worked in one of those aforementioned "mines" and it's not a bunch of people blowing rainbows out of their ass waiting for the next plane full of conflict diamonds to land on the ice road.

Doubt it will make much difference

[Anonymous Coward]

The US might care about "Conflict Minerals" but considering most electroincs are all "Made in China", it's hardly going to stop.

Irony

[shareme]

How ironic that we than ask China to supply the same minerals who has similar Human rights abuses.. US House of Representatives ..palm to face..

Re:Irony

[Grishnakh]

You've got to be kidding. China is no paragon of human rights, but they certainly don't abuse them to the extent seen in war-torn African countries, where rape and murder are common. The only thing that China does that sucks is that they practice censorship, keeping strong control over the media. They're also quick to use the death penalty, but that's not really that bad; they're not executing innocent fishermen, they're executing convicted criminals. Yes, Tianenmen was bad, but that was a long time ago. They haven't had any incidents like that in quite a while (and with today's technology, including iPods with video recording, it would be much harder to keep such a thing covered up). China's government is all about building up the country for the benefit of the people, and keeping strong control over social order. Their methods are harsh, but their intent is basically positive. They believe their methods are necessary in their culture to achieve the goals they've set. Trying to turn someplace like Iraq, for instance, into an advanced country would require similar methods, as democracy would never work there. To compare China to African warlords who are all in favor of genocide is just insulting.

Re:Irony

[Grishnakh]

Yes, that sucks, but that's not the same as committing gross human rights violations themselves.

By that logic, the US should be condemned too, as it trades freely with China, as do the Western European countries.

The US traded with Nazi Germany for some time; IBM is famous for this. The US is also happily propping up an obviously corrupt government in Afghanistan right now.

Hell on Earth

[CRCulver]

While not an especially great book, I got something of a picture of Eastern Congo from reading Tim Butcher's Blood River earlier this year. Though strangely little talked about, the entire region seems truly hell on earth, beyond any of the war zone or famished village you see on television. What I found interesting was that the materials from this region are transported in the backs of trucks to South Africa and only then processes, and the people mining these substances and transporting the excavated material get paid almost nothing for what is in later stages a treasure (and are frequently robbed on the way with it.)

Re:Hell on Earth

[commodore64_love]

>>>the entire region seems truly hell on earth, beyond any of the war zone or famished village you see on television

In Soviet Russia... ...nah that's not going to work. In Roman Empire..... the rowdy warring natives are subdued through force, and then the mines and minerals are claimed for the People and Senate of Rome. Eventually the warzone becomes a tamed province filled with beautiful villas. See Britannia circa 50 A.D.

Let's see - South Africa is close to Congo. Maybe they could annex it and bring "peace through superior firepower".

Yeah this work like the Drug War

[commodore64_love]

We all know that banning the use of marijuana, cocaine, and other naturally-occurring drugs helped de-escalate violence.

/end sarcasm

The banning of these conflict minerals simply means that you'll leave former miners without jobs, and then they'll starve, as happened when we embargoed Iraq in the 90s, and Cuba over the last several decades. I honestly don't think there's ANY workable solution to the Congo problem.

Re:Yeah this work like the Drug War

[Grishnakh]

No, actually it wasn't. As I said before, I propose arming and training the poor people, the fishers, farmers, villagers, etc., not more warlords.

The problem with US involvement in anything like this is that, instead of trying to help out the regular people who really need it, they look for whatever violent assholes happen to oppose the violent assholes currently in power. We think that by allying ourselves with a different group of tyrants, that we can get them into power (which actually does work many times), and then somehow these tyrants will feel loyalty to us (yeah right) and then stop being tyrants. It's insane.

Propping up a different group of tyrants isn't the answer. The answer is to empower the regular people, so that they aren't victims to either set of tyrants. But we don't want to do that, because then we wouldn't have any control over the situation. We'd rather have a tyrant in power (like the Shah in Iran, whom we installed after overthrowing a democratically elected government there) that we can use as a puppet, instead of just allowing the majority of people in a region to govern themselves.

No Surprise and years to late !

[Rotorua]

This is so DATED.... I work for a component manufacturer and NOBODY I repeat NOBODY has used anything from Congo for YEARS..... All the big boys demand that we prove the source of our Col-tan and provide a certified route to source Again this is the same as the Blood diamonds ... years to late !!! ----

Re:No Surprise and years to late !

[Anonymous Coward]

According to Wikipedia: "the Democratic Republic of the Congo produces a little less than 1% of the world's tantalum (in 2006)".
Which makes this trade act look like a cover-up of where the other 99% is coming from.

You would have to name everybody

[okoskimi]

If you read the articles (yes, I know... this is Slashdot) you will realize it is not a problem with companies, but with computers and cell phones in general requiring the conflict materials. For some reason, the summary included a few random names and left out others, e.g. Apple most certainly belongs in the list as it produces both computers and cell phones.

What you can do, is name the companies who do try to behave responsibly and control where their raw materials come from. Quoting one of the referenced articles: "Cell phone manufacturers like Samsung, Motorola, Apple and Nokia have long had official policies against the use of conflict minerals in their products."

Re:You would have to name everybody

[TheGavster]

Rather than blaming a technology for requiring a particular mineral, or an industry for producing such products, does it not make more sense to blame the people killing and repressing populations over the minerals for any bloodshed? I'm sure that the assholes running their little war bands in the Congo will find something else to murder and repress over, just as tribal kingdoms in the region have for much of history.

Fungible Resources

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm, does anyone in Congress know what a fungible resource is?

Basically, there's no way to know if the tungsten in your product (or even in your supply chain) came from the Eastern Congo, or pretty much anywhere else.

If the price for "tungsten" goes up appreciably, then Eastern Congo "tungsten" will just show up indirectly from other sources.

Re:Fungible Resources

[commodore64_love]

No.

Congress are the same people who said in 2005, "You're not going to see a housing collapse - that you see when people talk about a bubble." They think they know everything, but in reality they know little about the real world. (Please note I'm not picking on any person or group - they are ALL this clueless.) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iW5qKYfqALE

And t-shirts and jeans and shoes

[Colin Smith]

I don't see the problem. Humans have been preying on other humans since the first family split in two. You can get on as high a horse as you like, but all you're doing is adding hypocrisy and sanctimony to your list of character flaws.
 

Re:Who cares about the Congo?

[Lumpy]

We may not buy the stuff, but the Chinese will,

which means we will through a third party.... China!

col-tan

[SpinyNorman]

Had to look that one up...

It's an abbreviation ("coltan", actually) for columbite-tantalite, the primary ore from which niobium (formerly columbium) and tantalum are refined.

The summary should have stuck to elements rather than mixing elements and ores. I'm sure most of have head or niobium and tantalum, but "col-tan" ???

They might as well rename it

[zogger]

To the "Turn over to the Chinese all the minerals in Africa" act. They'll take them, and they do not care one bit about which local regime is in charge today. They go out of their way all the time to state they have no desire to interfere in local politics, they just want the business/raw materials.

Oh, by the way, how about they ban petroleum products, fuels and plastics? Or do they want to claim petroleum doesn't come in huge part from regimes where human rights are routinely abused, where murders rapes torture and so on are common?

Re:Just let me know...

[Anonymous Coward]

Non-violent rape happens when your partner consents.

If the partner consents, it's not rape.

What about statutory rape, like the 18yrold with 17yrold cases?

And assisted suicide may as well be called "statutory murder", given the justification for outlawing it.

I have

[WindBourne]

and I am not a geologist. These are rare earth minerals. The hard thing is that if you do some research about China and Rare earth, you will find that they posses the larges known ores of them. And just this fall, they banned most of them them, and then put limits on others (those that had mines outside of China rich with them). Why you ask? To limit their use to manufacturing in China ONLY. And where are these used at? High-end electrons (of which ALL electronics are heading), the high-end motors that will be needed for electric cars, wind generators, new more efficient generators for steam generators, etc, etc, etc.

Basically, we have China squeezing the west on one side, and dems squeezing on the other. Worse, I bet that EU will do the same. And does this help those in the middle? I seriously doubt it.

Re:Who cares about the Congo?

[dgatwood]

Those aren't true conservatives. They're neocons. There's a difference. :-)

A true conservative talks about a smaller government and means it.

Hate to be a grammar nazi..

[log0n]

Seriously people, learn your grammatically-correct English!

"... to try and end ..." should be "... to try to end ...". Try is the verb, 'try to' is the proper way of using said verb in a sentence. Otherwise, you're combining the two on the same subject.

I'm going to try international trade of tungsten and end the international trade of tungsten.
OR
I'm going to try to end the international trade of tungsten.

Re:Just let me know...

[Grishnakh]

What about statutory rape, like the 18yrold with 17yrold cases?

That's not rape, that's legal bullshit.

I'll repeat it for you: if both people consent, it's NOT rape. There are no exceptions.

Re:It's all signaling

[commodore64_love]

>>>The fact that it costs so much is the point. Gift exchange serves a valuable purpose in ensuring cooperation, because it serves to make declarations of intention credible.

(1) A new car or a new house is pretty damn expensive, and shows the guy is in it for the long haul. I think it would be an acceptable gift for the wife rather than the diamond.

(2) On the other hand, 50% of marriages end in divorce. Not exactly a wise investment to buy a $10,000 diamond ring when there's a 1 out of 2 chance you'll lose that investment. (The woman of course gets to keep it. Sucks for the guy.)