Sony Is Killing Kids in Africa!

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11 Jul 2008, 08:19 PM
Melf

Sony Is Killing Kids in Africa!

GamePolitics has a story about how the need for coltan, a rare metal used in personal technologies like the Playstation, has fueled a war, forced Congo children to work in mines, and caused the price of home grills to rise 150% in Singapore!

Quote:

Originally Posted by GamePolitics

The PlayStation 2's requirement for a rare metal in its manufacturing process helped fuel a bloody, decade-long conflict in Africa's Democratic Republic of Congo, according to an investigative report on Toward Freedom.The site alleges that demand for coltan by Sony and other personal electronics manufacturers led Rwandan troops and Western companies to exploit the people and mineral resources of Congo, with children often forced to work in mines.
Oona King, a former member of the British Parliament, told Toward Freedom:
Kids in Congo were being sent down mines to die so that kids in Europe and America could kill imaginary aliens in their living rooms.
So, what is coltan? From the report:
After it is refined, coltan becomes a bluish-gray powder called tantalum... [which] has one significant use: to satisfy the West’s insatiable appetite for personal technology. Tantalum is used to make cell phones, laptops and other electronics made, for example, by SONY, a multi-billion dollar multinational based in Japan that manufactures the iconic PlayStation...
Researcher David Barouski commented:
[The] PlayStation 2 launch... was a big part of the huge increase in demand for coltan... SONY and other companies like it, have the benefit of plausible deniability because the coltan ore trades hands so many times from when it is mined to when SONY gets a processed product, that a company often has no idea where the original coltan ore came from, and frankly don’t care to know. But statistical analysis shows it to be nearly inconceivable that SONY made all its PlayStations without using Congolese coltan.
A Sony rep told Toward Freedom that the company now takes steps to ensure that it does not use coltan illegally obtained from Congo in its manufacturing processes.
11 Jul 2008, 08:47 PM
cka

brings a whole new meaning to the term console warrior, don't it
11 Jul 2008, 11:56 PM
RedCoKid

This is old news; I don't know why it's getting the rounds today. Here's an in-depth story posted 11 months ago.
http://www.pulitzercenter.org/openitem.cfm?id=529
12 Jul 2008, 01:22 AM
Space Pirate Roberts

When I saw the title I thought it meant this game was getting a lot more interesting.
12 Jul 2008, 01:54 AM
Josh

One significant use! Airbags, and surgical instruments! Hearing aids and pacemakers! Anti-Lock breaks!
12 Jul 2008, 02:00 AM
Taito

Quote:

Originally Posted by RedCoKid

This is old news; I don't know why it's getting the rounds today. Here's an in-depth story posted 11 months ago.
http://www.pulitzercenter.org/openitem.cfm?id=529

The references section in Wikipedia's coltan article also has more facts on the subject (with far less finger-pointing and name-dropping).
12 Jul 2008, 02:12 AM
Pineapple

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Gas

When I saw the title I thought it meant this game was getting a lot more interesting.

There is no way that game was getting more interesting.
12 Jul 2008, 09:07 PM
Port

Quote:

Originally Posted by Josh

One significant use! Airbags, and surgical instruments! Hearing aids and pacemakers! Anti-Lock breaks!

That's zinc I thought.
13 Jul 2008, 02:56 AM
Josh

Quote:

Originally Posted by Port

That's zinc I thought.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coltan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tantalum