Playstation 2 Component Incites African War
| More news stories on Africa |
|---|
Ben Silverman, Yahoo!, n.d.
{snip}
According to a report by activist site Toward Freedom, for the past decade the search for a rare metal necessary in the manufacturing of Sony’s Playstation 2 game console has fueled a brutal conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
At the center of the conflict is the unrefined metallic ore, coltan. After processing, coltan turns into a powder called tantalum, which is used extensively in a wealth of western electronic devices including cell phones, computers and, of course, game consoles.
Allegedly, the demand for coltan prompted Rwandan military groups and western mining companies to plunder hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the rare metal, often by forcing prisoners-of-war and even children to work in the country’s coltan mines.
{snip}King.
{snip} To pump out more units, Sony required a significant increase in the production of electric capacitors, which are primarily made with tantalum. This helped drive the world price of the powder from $49/pound to a whopping $275/pound, resulting in the frenzied scouring of the Congolese hills known for being ripe with coltan.
Sony has since sworn off using tantalum acquired from the Congo, claiming that current builds of the PS2, PSP and PS3 consoles are sourced from a variety of mines in several different countries.
But according to researcher David Barouski, they’re hardly off the hook.
{snip} “{snip} But statistical analysis shows it to be nearly inconceivable that SONY made all its PlayStations without using Congolese coltan.”
{snip}
[Editor’s Note: “Inside Africa’s PlayStation War” can be read at the leftist website Toward Freedom here.]
(Posted on July 25, 2008)
Comments
Oh, yeah! Africans don’t kill each due to their own moral failings! Everybody knows that Canadians, Chinese, Brazilians, Americans, Australians and Japanese would inevitably allow their societies to degenerate into failed states if some rare and valuable mineral were discovered within their borders. Ultimately every evil can be traced to white racism and greedy white people. Damn! How can we white people stand ourselves?
Posted by at 6:38 PM on July 25
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/niobium/colummcs07.pdf
2006
Australia:29,400 tons
Brazil 4,391,000 tons
Congo: 50 tons
Posted by at 8:09 PM on July 25
Coltan, short for columbium (a.k.a. niobium) and tantalum - (Fe, Mn)(NbTa)2O6 is a vital strategic mineral for microelectronics production. Niobium is actually the correct name for columbium, as it was adopted by IUPAC in 1950. A number of my own patents involved a non-volatile, fatigue-free, low-voltage, radiation-hard FRAM memory caabable of maintaining 25 microcoulombs per square centimeter of residual polarization using strontium bismuth tantalate and strontium bismuth niobate, both of which are Smolensky perovskites. The capacitors in Playstations are simple Ta2O5.
Extensive ore reserves are found in Canada, Norway and the US, and demand by the microelectronics industry does not seem to be driving armed unrest in these countries. On the other hand, permanent armed unrest exists in African countries whether or not coltan, diamonds or anything else can be mined in a given area. The only common theme to the armed unrest in Africa is that Africans are found there. In fact, when last I checked, neither coltan nor diamonds were being mined in Los Angeles or Detroit.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 9:35 PM on July 25
There was a black comedian in the 1960’s by the name of Flip Wilson. He did a female character called Geraldine. Her catch phrase was ‘the devil made me do it’.
Although a joke, it’s a serious belief among blacks; ‘the devil (the white man) made me do it’.
Blacks take no responsibility for their behavior. So long as they have the white man to blame, regardless of how absurd the black logic, they don’t have to.
The mental leap they never seem to make is that if the white man is the problem, the solution would be to remove themselves from the influence of whites. Yet they do the opposite. They blame the white man and demand greater contact and interaction.
The mind of the black man is a terrible thing to take seriously.
Posted by sbuffalonative at 11:31 PM on July 25
In their zeal to push the blame onto Racist, Greedy, Exploitive Whitey the writers of this article forget two things:
1. This isn’t a spontaneous conflict driven by “demand” for coltan:
Inter-tribal, anti-governmental etc fighting, and associated “military groups”, are rife in “Black Africa” - whether it’s the northern “Arabised” Sudanese raiding southern “non-Arabised” Sudanese (yes, the “Darfur Conflict” is not really about “evil Arabic Sudanese attacking defenceless black Sudanese”, as it is about “Arabised Sudanese” attacking “non-Arabised Sudanese”), the ongoing struggle between the Toureg Berber tribes and the Malian government or various ethnic paramilitary groups slaughtering each other in Rwanda, there’s always some form of conflict on the “Dark Continent”.
2. The “demand” for coltan is not driving anything - it’s merely yet another means to an end for the aforementioned “military groups” to finance their struggles - if it wasn’t “blood diamonds”, “coltan” or any other mineral desired by the West, it would be coca or poppies being grown to finance “Whitey’s drug habit”.
3. The Congo - as with much of “Black Africa” - has always been a region awash with inter-ethnic, paramilitary etc conflicts, ever since the Belgians gave the nation it’s freedom - the Kinshasha conflict, Hutu/Tutsi paramilitaries, even incursions by the much-loved Mugabe have occurred there. Mark my words, in ten years time the Congo will again experience brutal conflicts, and Whitey will be blamed again.
Posted by Obscuratus at 2:03 AM on July 26
“In fact, when last I checked, neither coltan nor diamonds were being mined in Los Angeles or Detroit.
Posted by Michael C. Scott at 9:35 PM on July 25”
True. But cocaine in found there in abundant quantities, so I hear. So it’s not their fault. The poor darlings are only trying to survive.
Posted by at 8:30 AM on July 26
If Congo had no coltan to sell us, big First World corporations would be attacked for “neglect”.
Posted by Irish at 12:50 PM on July 26
“Currently, the Playstation 2 is the best-selling video game console of all-time, having sold through over 140 million units.”
Thank God I bought an X-box and not the most-sold console of all time. I don’t have to feel guilty.
Posted by at 11:39 PM on July 26
Good grief!
Next weeks article: WESTERN WORLD’S BOYCOTT OF CONGO’S RICH MINERAL RESOURCES PERPETUATES POVERTY, FUELS BRUTAL CIVIL CONFLICT.
Posted by schoolteacher at 12:27 PM on July 27
The best thing that ever happened to Congo, was Mike Hoare and the 5th Commando in 1965 and the happenings in Stanleyville, but then, they all left. Look it up. Weapons are our friends.
Posted by Skip at 2:31 PM on July 27
It is really time to stop treating africans like they are civilized and end food and medical aid to africa. The population explosion is already spilling into europe. As the Irish paper columnist noted all the food aid did in Ethiopia since Live Aid was doulbe the population and they are starving again.
Posted by at 4:45 AM on July 28
Liberal Crybabies Without Facts, episode #8,723,554,998. The report linked to by 8:09 PM is only one of many that solidly refutes the implicit statement in this current round of sad-violin-playing; that coltan is ONLY coming from the Congo and we bad old whities should stop it.
But of course if we suddenly boycotted it we’d be guilty of making people starve because we won’t hand over (yet more of) our money for a good we don’t even need from them.
Posted by Dark-Star at 1:58 PM on July 28
This is the way it always is with the left. If whites invest in a black region they are “exploiting” that region. If they fail to invest, they are “neglecting” that region. The left always has it both ways on all arguments. The astonishing thing is that so many whites just go along with these transparent rationalizations.
Posted by Tim in Indiana at 2:51 PM on July 28
Sony has the means to extract coltan in Congo without relying on intertribal warfare. Why did their experts on public relations disregard such a possible disaster?
Posted by Genius160 at 6:27 PM on July 28
Sony has the means to extract coltan in Congo without relying on intertribal warfare. Why did their experts on public relations disregard such a possible disaster?
Posted by Genius160 at 9:32 PM on July 28
“Playstation 2 Component Incites African War”
Proof positive that ANYTHING will start a war among the earth’s most primitive inhabitants.
If Africa falls any further, it will be no better than Detroit or New Orleans.
Posted by at 1:36 PM on July 29
“…(yes, the “Darfur Conflict” is not really about “evil Arabic Sudanese attacking defenceless black Sudanese”, as it is about “Arabised Sudanese” attacking “non-Arabised Sudanese”)…”
No, it isn’t. The poor, put-upon “Darfurians” the Sudanese Jonjuweed (sp?) keep trying to get rid of (and the Leftists of the world [including Uncle Sam] are hell-bent on protecting from the consequences of their own actions) are Chadian illegal aliens dodging the civil war next door in Chad (basically, the Sudan has a “dry-back” problem). They have no right to be in Darfur at all, and the Sudanese Jonjuweed have the right to dispatch them any way they see fit. It’s called NATIONAL DEFENSE.
Posted by at 4:17 PM on July 29
In the movie “Blood Diamonds” the main protaganist, DiCaprio, is told an acronym, “TIA,” This Is Africa. It is used later when DiCaprio has to kill him. I suppose the American equivolent is “TNA,” which I’m sure you can figure it out eventually…
Posted by at 9:01 PM on July 30