{"id":4565,"date":"2009-06-19T11:30:08","date_gmt":"2009-06-19T17:30:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/?p=4565"},"modified":"2013-06-12T12:01:46","modified_gmt":"2013-06-12T18:01:46","slug":"iphones-and-dirty-coltan-justicefriday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/iphones-and-dirty-coltan-justicefriday\/","title":{"rendered":"iPhones and dirty Coltan #justicefriday"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>
Line outside Dallas' Apple store | Photo by alexmuse<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Today a new iPhone 3Gs is being released to the masses. Folks were lining up around the block to get their hands on Steve Jobs’ latest gadget.<\/p>\n

The new 3Gs just adds to the iphone buzz on Twitter<\/a> about the new iPhone 3.0 OS (released earlier this week).<\/p>\n

And I get it. I’m a huge fan of technology and gadgets – including my beat-up BlackBerry Curve 8310.<\/p>\n

But what if these things we consume on a daily basis are enslaving folks in more ways than we realize (there’s a reason folks have fondly adopted CrackBerry as an appropriate nickname for their BlackBerry)?
\n
\nWhat if our consumptions are enslaving others as well? Children who live half a continent away?<\/p>\n

This week, while everyone was a buzz about the new iPhones, I heard about “dirty Coltan” for the first time via Brian McLaren’s blog<\/a>. Then the next day I found this startling video:<\/p>\n\n

More info from Wikipedia<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Coltan is the colloquial African name for columbite – tantalite, a metallic ore from which the elements niobium and tantalum are extracted. The niobium , formerly “columbium”, dominant mineral is columbite, hence the “col” half of the term. The mineral concentrates dominated by tantalum are referred to as tantalite. In appearance, coltan is a dull black ore. Tantalum from coltan is used in consumer electronics products such as cell phones, DVD players, and computers. Export of coltan from the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo to European and American markets has been cited by experts as helping to finance the present-day conflict in the Congo, with one aid agency asserting that “much of the finance sustaining the civil wars in Africa, especially in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, is directly connected to Coltan profits.”\u009d An estimated 5.4 million people have died since 1998 in the war in the Congo.<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Wikipedia continues<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Toward Freedom claims that the 2000 launch of the Sony PS2 required a large increase in production of electric capacitors, which are primarily made with tantalum, which greatly increased the world price of the powder from $49\/pound to a $275\/pound, resulting in accelerated mining of the Congolese hills containing coltan. Sales of computers, mobile phones, and DVD players spiked around this same time. Sony claims it has discontinued its use of tantalum acquired from the Congo, and sourced it from a variety of mines in several different countries. University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh undergraduate student and blogger David Barouski claims \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The 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.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I don’t mean to pick on any particular brand or product. It seems like all electronics that use capacitors are affected. From hearing aids and pacemakers, to airbags, GPS, ignition systems and anti-lock braking systems in automobiles, through to laptop computers, mobile phones, video game consoles, video cameras and digital cameras – they all use capacitors that are made from coltan.<\/p>\n

But what if you knew that the gadgets and electronics we’ve come to rely on so heavily each and every day were enslaving you? Would you give them up? <\/strong><\/p>\n

And what if you knew they were enslaving others? Would you care?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Are we so enslaved to our electronics, chocolate<\/span>, cheap clothes, coffee and other cheap consumer goods that we don’t mind?<\/strong><\/p>\n

(photo from alexmuse<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today a new iPhone 3Gs is being released to the masses. Folks were lining up around the block to get their hands on Steve Jobs’ latest gadget. The new 3Gs just adds to the iphone buzz on Twitter about the new iPhone 3.0 OS (released earlier this week). And I get it. I’m a huge … Continue reading iPhones and dirty Coltan #justicefriday<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":84,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18,5,17],"tags":[888,580,2223,2225,2227,2228,2221,2226,2208,146,2224],"class_list":["post-4565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faith","category-politics","category-take-action","tag-africa","tag-brian-mclaren","tag-coltan","tag-congo","tag-consumption","tag-electronics","tag-human-trafficking","tag-iphone-3gs","tag-labor","tag-slavery","tag-tantalum"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pEnSo-1bD","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/84"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4565"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4565\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11345,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4565\/revisions\/11345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/casadeblundell.com\/jonathan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}