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War, Murder, Rape... All for Your Cell Phone

By Stan Cox, AlterNet. Posted September 14, 2006.


Everyone's heard about the human rights abuses in African gold and diamond mines. But when it comes to their ultra-cool, razor-thin cell phones, American consumers won't get the message.
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"As you crawl through the tiny hole, using your arms and fingers to scratch, there's not enough space to dig properly and you get badly grazed all over. And then, when you do finally come back out with the cassiterite, the soldiers are waiting to grab it at gunpoint. Which means you have nothing to buy food with. So we're always hungry."

That's how Muhanga Kawaya, a miner in the remote northeastern province of North Kivu in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), described his job to reporter Jonathan Miller of Britain's Channel 4 last year. Cassiterite, or tin oxide, is the most important source of the metallic element tin, and the DRC is home to fully one-third of the world's reserves. Some cassiterite miners work on sites operated directly by the country's military or other armed groups. Working in the same area are "artisanal" miners who are theoretically independent, like prospectors in America's Old West. But the cassiterite they extract is heavily taxed by the soldiers -- when it's not just stolen outright.

With a land area as vast as that of Texas, California, Montana, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada and Colorado combined, the DRC has only 300 miles of paved roads. To reach one of the many cassiterite mines in the virtually roadless northeast, 1,000 miles from the national capital Kinshasa, Miller's team followed a 40-mile footpath that, he reported, was as "busy as a motorway. Four thousand porters ply this route carrying sacks of rock heavier than they are. Each of their 50 kilogram packs of cassiterite is worth $400 on the world market. Government soldiers often force porters at gunpoint to carry the rocks free of charge; if they're lucky, though, they can make up to $5 a day." (Watch Channel 4's gripping, award-winning report here.)

So, why should we care? Because without cassiterite rock and the other ores mined in the Congo we would be unable to manufacture the linchpins of our global "weightless economy" -- computers and telephones.

Greener phones, meaner mines

A horrific war among the DRC military and various rebel armies officially ended in 2003 after taking 3 million to 4 million lives. But fighting continued long after that in the northeast, fueled by mining profits. First-ever democratic national elections in July have set up an October runoff election in the DRC, along with great hope for the future. Meanwhile, disarmament and integration of the armies is being carried out. But soldiers frequently receive little or no pay, and that provides a strong incentive for them to squeeze what they can from the cassiterite business.

The majority of the ore moves through illicit channels across the northeastern border to Rwanda, enriching troops and middlemen along the way. The U.K.-based organization Global Witness has comprehensively documented the impact of resource extraction in the DRC in a 2005 report that described "killing, rape, torture, arbitrary arrests, intimidation, mutilation, and the destruction or pillage of private property" that soldiers used "to gain control either over resource-rich areas or over the ability to tax resources."

Since the July elections, says Carina Tertsakian of Global Witness, "labor conditions remain pretty much the same, especially in the informal sector." She says the DRC government now has slightly more control over the mines, "but that's not necessarily for the better." Despite pressure from the United Nations and European Union to pay members of its newly integrated armed forces more consistently, miners are being treated just as they were during the war.

In a cruel irony, Western efforts to make information-age products more environmentally friendly actually boosted incentives for violence and exploitation. In late 2002, the EU joined Japan in banning lead from the solder used in cell phones and other electronic goods. Traditional solder is an amalgam of 63 percent tin and 37 percent lead, but lead-free solder is composed almost 95 percent of tin. Partly in response to that new demand, the world price of tin shot up by almost 150 percent between August 2002 and May 2004, and has remained high since. As prices rose, fighting in the eastern DRC intensified.

Killer coltan

This wasn't the first time that fighters in DRC and Rwanda have reaped a mineral bonanza. Back in 2000, a spike in the price of coltan, an ore that is the source of the precious metal tantalum, spurred feverish mining, profiteering and suffering in the same area of northeast DRC where cassiterite is mined. The DRC controls an estimated 64 to 80 percent of world coltan reserves, and the windfall from mining those deposits funded a Rwanda-backed rebel army of as many as 40,000 soldiers during 2000-2002. The mining was also blamed for destroying habitat of the mountain gorilla; the gorilla population plunged by half in a national park where coltan was being mined.


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Stan Cox is a plant breeder and writer in Salina, Kan.

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tiny
Posted by: rsaxto on Sep 14, 2006 12:44 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I tried using one of the new tiny cell phones owned by a relative but I couldn't use it because the keys are too tiny for my fingers. I don't even own a cell phone as I hate carrying things around with me that I really don't need. The world is a crazy place with many having too much and even more having too little. Justice for all is so far away that one wonders if the world will ever be just and free from stupid wars.

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» RE: tiny very Posted by: bullwhip7
» RE: tiny very Posted by: monkeywrench
» RE: tiny very Posted by: VannaLaRoche
» RE: tiny Posted by: ethanay
You forgot to mention...
Posted by: Aussie Kim on Sep 14, 2006 1:11 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
...that the miners who mine coltan don't get paid enough and don't get enough food (the mines are in the middle of nowhere) so they eat gorillas. ("bush meat")

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» RE: You forgot to mention... Posted by: andrewgirma
How long before the writer gets the message?
Posted by: cso1 on Sep 14, 2006 2:37 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I've never owned a mobile phone, but these sorts of outdated and misleading articles make me see red.
The spike in tantalum prices in 2000 was due in large part to accidental triple ordering by the world's two main buyers. This created a push for alternative sources.
Very little tantalum sold at the high prices reached of U.S. $400 plus per pound. The spot price soon collapsed to under $U.S. $15 per pound and has since recovered to the very long term normal average of around $30. The panic ordering of 2000 created a glut from which the tantalum industry is yet to recover.
Most of the world's tantalum has long been supplied by Australia in the form of long term contracts at fixed prices (higher than spot). Most of the supply from Australia has long been provided by Sons of Gwalia - a company which got into such financial strife in the last few years that it was delisted from the Australian stock exchange and one of its two mines partly shut down.
After SGW's collapse, overstocked buyers forced the contracts to be renegotiated to shorter terms on different terms to help get over the glut of tantalum. No other company in the world has managed to start a properly approved tantalum project this century, although several are trying hard, despite the uneconomic prices (tantalum has traditionally been mined as a byproduct as it not normally worth mining by itself - prices are normally too low for its scarcity).
Tantalum is not traded on any recognised metal exchange because the market is too small. It is one of the few commodities whose price has failed to participate properly in the raging bull market in most commodities in the last few years - bull markets in metals such as copper - one of many minerals the Congo has vast reserves of - yet somehow the author of this article would have us believe that new phones with tantalum in them are "the problem".
The best way out of poverty is jobs and trade - not handouts and isolation. "Bush meat" is eaten by starving people - starving people who need jobs to stay alive in the long term - starving people who need to be provided with alternatives to bush meat. The solution is not to ignore the Congo's plight through isolation - the wildlife and people need help.
The world's main tantalum body has a policy which is against any of its members, including American companies, importing tantalum from non-approved sources, of which the Congo is listed as one. To the best of my knowledge, this does not apply for various other Congo commodities such as copper.
If one is going to quote the USGS as a valid source of information for articles, as has been done here, note their figures on tantalum exports from the Congo and surrounding countries - the amounts are tiny compared to the main sources such as Australia. It's simple enough, although time consuming, to verify independently. The amount of tantalum in tantalum containing devices can be matched with direct supply from approved mines and buyers and any left over noted.
I wish conservationists and the like would stop pushing the simplistic nonsense that Congo tantalum is "the" reason the great apes have been threatened and that the best way to fix the problem is to stop buying new mobile phones. It's akin to suggesting that all conservation issues in China are represented by the Giant panda and not buying bamboo will somehow magically fix the underlying problems affecting the wider issue.

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You need some lessons in courtesy
Posted by: mat38 on Sep 14, 2006 5:18 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
or are you simply, a fool?

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"Where is danger is double and pleasures are few"-Merle Travis
Posted by: R.I.P. on Sep 14, 2006 6:09 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
"killing, rape, torture, arbitrary arrests, intimidation, mutilation, and the destruction or pillage of private property" that soldiers used "to gain control either over resource-rich areas or over the ability to tax resources."
Isn't this what our military is doing for the same reasons?
It's only collorateral damage after all - the price OTHER people have to pay for "freedom".

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Selling Human Misery
Posted by: NoPCZone on Sep 14, 2006 6:11 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
More and more these products are sourced in Communist China (The Worker's Paradise™) where prison labor thrives, worker protections are few and abuse is common.

Combine the sourcing of the rare metals used in the production of such products with the methods and conditions used to make them and you are presented with a moral question:

Do you really want to buy a product that is such a product of human misery?

Back in the days of 'liberalism gone wild' (1960's & 70's) a common slogan among those with a social conscience was 'Live simply so that others may simply live' and I think that me the starting point for many of us in searching for an answer to this quandry.


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» RE: Selling Human Misery Posted by: andrewgirma
So long as they are just black Africans . . .
Posted by: JCR on Sep 14, 2006 6:33 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
This was an interesting article to be sure. These "miners" are just the latest victims in our rush to own the latest and greatest. I won't deny that I own a cell phone, but I am still "getting by" on my Nokia bought in 2000. I know, I know - it doesn't have an mp3 player and it doesn't take pictures. It won't connect to the internet and doesn't play streaming video!! It's a total outrage!!! I don't know for the life of me how I survive. By the way, it does still serve its primary purpose - receive and transmit voice calls and even a text message or two! Has anyone noticed that your phones are designed for early technological obsolescence? Have you noticed how many people buy into that crap?

I find it interesting that the EU and Japan set these rigorous environmental standards knowing full well that they will result in greater human exploitation but that doesn't seem to concern them. But then again when has Europe really shown much concern for Africa, other than exploiting it? At least the US doesn't pretend to care about human rights or the environment. At what point do we take into consideration the impact our consumerism, primarily in regards to tech gadgets, has on the environment (including those pesky animals) AND humans?

Oh well, as long as they are black and dying somewhere beyond our immediate vicinity - out of sight really is out of mind . . . I mean when have we ever really given a shit about blacks in Africa, or the US for that matter?

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Think fast
Posted by: davcrock on Sep 14, 2006 6:39 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
What is the fastest growing market for cell phones?

Africa. Interesting, no?

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» RE: Think fast Posted by: carpee
» RE: Think fast Posted by: talkville
Best we look in our yard before we start pointing fingers!
Posted by: WhuThe?!? on Sep 14, 2006 7:49 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I get the distinct impression you'd rather blame China than look in the mirror. WE have set the bad example for the rest of the world by consuming without regard for future generations or for other creatures with whom we should be sharing the planet, and other countries are following suit. Secondly, I believe we STILL have the highest consumption rate per capita on the entire planet. Thirdly, no, never mind, I won't even bother addressing your eloquent use of words; I'm sure some other posters will save me the trouble.

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The future
Posted by: pzzp on Sep 14, 2006 9:04 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
will be distingushed by battle for the table scraps of the 21st century.

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» Back to The future Posted by: bornxeyed
worker's rights
Posted by: bouyant on Sep 14, 2006 9:05 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
for every person on the planet...support your local union. Support unions everywhere.

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» RE: worker's rights Posted by: polyquat50
» RE: worker's rights Posted by: bornxeyed
» RE: worker's rights Posted by: lively56
gates of hell
Posted by: edith on Sep 14, 2006 9:16 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
William Blake's poetry and art burn with examples of souls burned in the furnaces of the then new Industrial Revolution.

Between cell phones, cars and jewelry, we put up with exploitation of labor, war, pollution and greedy obsession with consumption for its own sake.

We have created a spiritual hell for ourselves and a labor hell for the workers who crawl thu the Earth for the lifestyle the marketing gurus lure us into.

I am not a religious believer. But if there ever was a Sodom and Gomorrah..........

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» RE: gates of hell Posted by: velvel of atlanta
Who really needs a cell phone?
Posted by: badkitty on Sep 14, 2006 10:04 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Except fcr the detail, most of this column is not news. The City of Berkeley (I can hear you now!) put something up on their website over a year ago about the costs of disposing of a cell phone. Although I have mentioned this to my boss, my husband, my son... it doesn't make a dent on anyone. Personally I have never needed a cell phone, although it is true there are fewer pay phones these days (that's my husband's excuse). And frankly, I'm really not interested in a) other people's telephone conversations and b) being available to everyone all the time. After reading this, I'm almost positive I will never need a cell phone. As someone else said, let's try to live off the misery of others as little as possible.

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"So, why should we care? "
Posted by: AnarchX on Sep 14, 2006 11:02 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
... I dunno, maybe because people are being oppressed and treated as slaves. Ahhh, capitalism! Money can only be made on the backs of the oppressed.

Remember: these are people too, with mothers, sister, brothers, cousins, like you and yours.

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War, murder, rape.......
Posted by: sidewinder on Sep 14, 2006 11:17 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Does this mean that all you liberal, left-wing pricks are going to give up your cell phones?

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» RE: War, murder, rape....... Posted by: AnarchX
» RE: War, murder, rape....... Posted by: bornxeyed
» RE: War, murder, rape....... Posted by: AnarchX
» RE: War, murder, rape....... Posted by: polyquat50
» RE: War, murder, rape....... Posted by: bornxeyed
» RE: War, murder, rape....... Posted by: talkville
» RE: War, murder, rape....... Posted by: bornxeyed
» RE: War, murder, rape....... Posted by: talkville
» RE: War, murder, rape....... Posted by: bornxeyed
» RE: War, murder, rape....... Posted by: talkville
Typical
Posted by: albrechtkrausse on Sep 14, 2006 11:19 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Unintended consequences on those crazy environmental laws. Certainly not the first time the Western countries have helped caused death in Africa in attempts to be "environmentally friendly". When they banned DDT the misquito born illnesses in tropical countries in Africa and Asia has gotten almost out of control. Dipheria, SleepingSickness, Malaria, YellowFever, DenqueFever have killed millions. Well, who cares says the country-club environmentalists. We might have saved some eagles. After all those "africans" have too many babies anyway.

"In a cruel irony, Western efforts to make information-age products more environmentally friendly actually boosted incentives for violence and exploitation."

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» RE: Typical Posted by: valkyrie
oh the irony
Posted by: bornxeyed on Sep 14, 2006 11:26 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
of discussing the socio-environmental impact of cell phones on a computer network.

Is the irony really lost on everyone but me that except for the "market" push of ever increasing bandwith and bus speed needed to keep up with streaming video and audio driven websites, all to gobble up that ever increasing market share of hits, to attract more advertisers and their dollars, so that webhosting facilities can offer more bandwidth intensive services to more nodes, we could all still be using 386 computers on a 14.4 modem, i.e. 15 year old computer technology to read the TEXT portion and static images of 99% of the websites out there?

How oftern do you replace your computer just because HP, Dell, Gateway et al offer up another 1GHz of microprocessor, another 50 GBytes of hard drive capacity, another 1mbps of line speed at 1/2 the previous model's cost just so you can email some joke of the day to someone in the next office?

If you think cell phones require precious, rare earth and base metals in abundance just so we can text message our friends with instant real-time streaming video of our new baby spitting up, imagine how much more of those metals are in the very computer you are commenting with right now.

I know, I'm the pot calling the kettle black here, and many of you are using your office computers which are foisted on you by your employer. But I will say, with all honesty, if I wasn't employed as a programmer and expected to keep up with the technology, to a certain extent, in order to work with clients systems and wasn't "filtered out" by websites that made my 28.8 modem on my old 1996 133 MHz NEC notebook choke waiting for high bandwidth websites to load then everything I personally wish to do on the internet could be done with the 1995 486 computer gathering dust in my bedroom.

As for now, I'm sticking to no cell phone, except the one I bought when the phone system was down for 3 months in 2004 because of the hurricanes and I hadn't put a penny of time on in a year and keeping this 3 year old laptop until it totally breaks. Then I'll go back to buying 3 year old used equipment like I did in the past.

I haven't bought a new TV in 16 years nor a new stereo in 30. I've bought a VCR, my first, in 2003 and a DVD player on 2004. I can't say I won't replace them if they break, but abarring Florida power grid problems killing them, with my past record that might not be until 2020.


Not that I think I'm holier than anyone, I just saw the irony, as I said, of indicting cell phones on a computer network that, for all any user knows, might get upgraded every 6 months too.

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What about your plumbing?
Posted by: muymal on Sep 14, 2006 1:08 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
If tin and copper are the culprits, It seems traditional plumbing and wireing are a greater problem. I know alot of Calif. are using plastic supply line pipe (PEX) , but any plumbing with copper has to use a high tin solder because it has to be lead-free.

It's not as sexy as anti-cell phone rhetoric, but the housing industry has to use tons more tin. (I only have anticdotal proof based upon the amount of tin in my cell phone compared to the plumbing work I need to update from the corroding galv. in my own house).

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» RE: What about your plumbing? Posted by: bornxeyed
Difference (and Distance) make Exploitation Possible
Posted by: lonpine on Sep 14, 2006 1:43 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Technology, while making things easier and possible, also gives us myopia and amnesia. How many Americans know what a wheat berry looks like? Or what happens to the styrofoam cups we discard by the millions?

The long arm of unregulated international commerce, aka, "free trade," is indeed far reaching. We are now linked economically everywhere in terms of raw materials (including scrap), energy, final products, capital and labor. When will we be linked... morally, emotionally?

Most Americans would never tolerate allowing a West Virginia coal miner be exposed to 1/10th what these African miners are exposed to- the recent US mining accidents notwithstanding.

What makes it possible for us to be indifferent to these people's suffering in the name of our consumer/commercial empire?

What will it take for us as consumers to demand and expect them to be treated as our miners are in the US?

Someone once wrote that more than a 100 people make a democracy hard to manage. Imagine if we still lived in communities of 100 people in size. Imagine how the whole community would respond if one of us were subjected to these terrible working conditions for the benefit of the other 99.

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unfortunately---the clueless
Posted by: zooeyhall on Sep 14, 2006 4:30 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
But how do we get past the basic problem: the cluelessness of most Americans about the world OUTSIDE.

For example, I live in rural NE Nebraska. Eighty percent of the people around here wouldn't even know that it is a country, and you would be lucky to find 2 people out of a hundred who could even tell you where it is located.

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» RE: unfortunately---the clueless Posted by: BobbyGreyFriar
Some of us and some of us
Posted by: talkville on Sep 15, 2006 3:58 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Some of us see fellow humans in the Congo; some of us see land, water and 'resources'. These days, all of us in the USA are obliged to sustain ourselves (and justify ourselves) by emphasis of the latter and super-exploitation of the former. Some of us have referred to this as 'the American Way'. So with the Congo, so with all Africa, the Middle and Far East, Indonesia, Latin America, etc. - everywhere but in the 'land of the free and the home of the brave'. Among others, Mother England organized and developed the state of affairs; we've inherited more than we acknowledge. Some of us are rulers, most of us are not. But text-messaging, high-speed and iPods are just so cool! And so 'affordable', a few pennies a day, less than the price of a Starbucks capuccino. Profit, you see, is where it's at. As Reagan said, 'the business of government is business'; who's got time to think of the unseemly aspects of the free enterprise? Hike up your own bootstraps, there's money to be made!

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old ma
Posted by: Mamarianne on Sep 15, 2006 5:52 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
The pile of discarded cell phones is fed by the providers who insist on new phones when customers sign on to new plans. Many cell users would have willingly kept their "old" familiar phones if offered the opportunity and, perhaps, a discount
Along with publishing accounts of the abuse of the workers who mine the raw materials and manufacture these phones, this article provides a link to an agency that recycles. The link to CollectiveGood is well worth the click! Additionally, many communities have local uses for discarded phones, providing them to senior citizens and women in battering situations. Readers should look into this.
Organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch should be supported in their struggle to improve conditions for the laborers who make so many of our modern conveniences possible. Sadly, little is being done to stop the flood of imports of consumer goods made by non-union, low-income, workers who must often endure horrendous conditions. Use those phones to speak up!

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» RE: old ma Posted by: fervidus
Tell the Cell Phone Industry to Clean Up Its Act
Posted by: goldie'sgirl on Sep 15, 2006 9:03 AM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
Tell the wireless industry they need to take more responsibility for recycling their old products in order to decrease these conflicts and the impacts of mining on the environment!

Make your voice heard here and check out www.recyclemycellphone.org for more info.

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subject change.........
Posted by: jonestown kool-aid on Sep 16, 2006 8:37 PM   
Current rating: Not yet rated    [1 = poor; 5 = excellent]
I must digress for a moment here... First of all, the fact that all you folks here seem to be pretty well-informed U.S. citizens is a small miracle in and of itself. I'm almost speechless.

The fact that you're not eating 'cheeze-wiz' straight from the can into your obese, ignorant, liberal or neo-con mouths while watching NASCAR highlights, then chasing it down with cheap, mass produced shit beer is amazing!

You people actually READ! Is there hope? No.

I went to a Roger Waters concert last night and he got heckled and booed when he showed negative images of Dumbya on the screen, of course many of these drunk fools were sitting close to me. Of course.

FOR THOSE WHO CHOOSE TO RECYCLE YOUR PHONES!!!!!!!!!

Even if you 'erase' all of your personal info (texts, phone numbers, any other private info) some hacks out there actually take the time to retrieve ALL of this info. Apparently, erasing the stored info from your phone is not effective, and aside from 'running your phone over with your car' (actually suggested by ''an expert in security") I'm not aware of any other methods used for information disposal. LOOK INTO IT!

At a time in history when privacy is, for all practical purposes, obsolete... one must take additional steps to protect yourself from wonderful things like identity theft, and waste more time 'protecting yourself' from getting fucked by some random stranger...................serenity now....................

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