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1. Comment - Verizon Launches Child Locator Service

   (Jun 13, 2006 - 11:11 PM)

   Yes we could bring them our wonderful ideas. Such as? Sounds quite like Manifest Destiny huh? Perhaps "We" should learn from the savages.
   
   And of course coltan isn't the only mineral and the legacy is long and fluid but the topic was cellphones.
   
   Most people are unaware or in denial of the consequences of their "lifestyles". Once you despoil a stream from mining operations the deal is done. It matters not one whit, from that point forward, whether the gadget that you concocted from that operation is used for the mythical "good or evil". There is an altogether different imperative involved.
   
   The heart of darkness.
   
   The horror.
   
   Your comments are racist.
   
   By the way those who finance and enable the genocide are white western governments.

2. Comment - Verizon Launches Child Locator Service

   (Jun 13, 2006 - 11:45 AM)

   So I wonder if the children in The Congo know about why they are forced into prostitution and into the mines. All so suburban children in America can have cell phones and always stay in touch with mumsie and so mumsie can always stay in touch with them.
   
   Guns, Money and cellphones. It's all connected.
   
   Cellphones fuel Congo conflict
   Cellphones may have revolutionized the way we communicate, but in Central Africa their biggest legacy is war.
   Nearly 3 million people have died in Congo in a four-year war over coltan, a heat-resistant mineral ore widely used in cellphones, laptops and playstations. Eighty percent of the world's coltan reserves are in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
   The mountainous jungle area where the coltan is mined is the battleground of what has been grimly dubbed "Africa's first World War," pitting Congolese forces against those of six neighbouring countries and numerous armed factions.
   The victims are mostly civilians. Starvation and disease have killed hundreds of thousands and the fighting has displaced 2 million people from their homes.
   Often dismissed as an ethnic war, the conflict is really over natural resources sought by foreign corporations -- diamonds, tin, copper, gold, but mostly coltan.
   At stake for the multitude of heavily armed militias and governments is a cut of the high-tech boom of the 1990s, which sent the price of coltan skyrocketing to peak at US$400 per kilo. Coltan -- short for colombo-tantalite -- is refined into tantalum, a "magic powder" essential to many electronic devices.
   The war started in 1998 when Congolese rebel forces, backed by Rwanda and Uganda, seized eastern Congo and moved into strategic mining areas, attacking villages along the way.
   
   And so the war came, with its lies, murder, ruin, and corruption. Yet how many of those now opposed to this horrific military action are prepared to pay the actual cost of ending it: i.e., relinquishing the guarantee of cheap gadgets and the lifestyle it sustains? The number is doubtless very small.
   
   In Bukavu, a 29-year-old human rights campaigner called Bertrand Bisimwa summarised his country’s situation for me with cruel concision. “Since the nineteenth century, when the world looks at Congo it sees a pile of riches with some black people inconveniently sitting on top of them. They eradicate the Congolese people so they can possess the mines and resources. They destroy us because we are an inconvenience.” As he speaks, I picture the raped women with bullets burying through their intestines and try to weigh them against the piles of blood-soaked electronic goods sitting beneath my Christmas tree with their little chunks of Congolese metal whirring inside. Bertrand smiles and says, “Tell me – who are the savages? Us, or you?”