Cell Phones, Coltan and the Congo

The DISH Vol. 11 No 34
owner-thedishlist@treet.ctinetworks.com

By one estimate, the Rwandan army made at least $250 million over a period of 18 months through the sale of coltan, even though no coltan is mined in Rwanda. All countries involved in the war, much like the consumer electronics industry, deny exploiting the Congo's natural resources......

In 1908, the U.S. Patent Office issued a wireless telephone patent to Nathan B. Stubblefield of Murray, Kentucky. His patent was applied to "cave radio" telephones, which were not directly related to cellular telephone technology. Radiophones date back to Reginald Fessenden's invention and shore to ship demonstration of radio telephony, through the Second World War with military use of radio telephony links and civil services in the 1950s. In 1947, Bell Laboratory engineers at AT&T invented cells for mobile phone base stations and further developed the technology in the 1960s. The first portable handset was invented by Martin Cooper, a Motorola researcher, in 1973.

In 1977, AT&T and Bell Labs produced the first cellular system in Chicago; it consisted of 2000 trial customers. A similar system was developed in Tokyo. The US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which controls the frequency availability that cell phones require to operate, authorized the first mobile phone in 1983.  FCC regulations and slow response to the need and demand are credited with delaying the technology's development. Still, in the span of a few decades, cell phones are widely used throughout the world.

Cell phones and other consumer electronics are made possible by coltan, as it is known in Africa. Short for columbite tantalite, coltan is a dull black metallic ore used to produce the elements niobium and tantalum.

Tantalum from coltan is used primarily in the production of capacitors, particularly for applications requiring a small compact format and high reliability, ranging widely from hearing aids and pacemakers, to airbags, GPS, ignition and anti lock braking systems in automobiles, to laptop computers, cell phones, video game consoles, video  and digital cameras.

Tantalum is primarily produced in Australia, where the largest producer, Taliso Minerals, operates the Wodgina mine. In addition to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where 80% of coltan is believed to exist, tantalum minerals are mined in Brazil, Canada, China, Ethiopia and Mozambique.

Coltan mining operations in the Congo are very primitive. Some have likened them to the California Gold Rush of the mid 1800s. Like the Gold Rush, which drew poor farmers and others to the gold fields, poor Congolese are drawn to the jungle to mine coltan. In the process, the environment is being desecrated, endangered animals, including elephants and gorillas, are being decimated, slaughtered for food by miners and others flooding into the coltan rich region.

The United Nations and others believe the income from coltan mining is helping to finance the present day Congo conflict. According to a highly controversial U.N. Security Council report, natural resources, including coltan, from the Congo are exploited by other countries involved in the current war. For instances, forces from neighboring Rwanda, Uganda and Burundi are believed to be involved in smuggling coltan from the Congo and using the revenues from the high price of coltan to sustain their efforts in the conflict.

  By one estimate, the Rwandan army made at least $250 million over a period of 18 months through the sale of coltan, even though no coltan is mined in Rwanda. All countries involved in the war, much like the consumer electronics industry, deny exploiting the Congo's natural resources. (Sources: www.learnabouthistory.com/, http://en.wikipedia.org/ and http://raceandhistory.com)

The Congo

By Vachel Lindsay (1879   1931)

Fat black bucks in a wine barrel room,

Barrel house kings, with feet unstable,

Sagged and reeled and pounded on the table,

Pounded on the table,

Beat an empty barrel with the handle of a broom,

Hard as they were able, Boom, boom, Boom,

With a silk umbrella and the handle of a broom,

Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, Boom.

Then I had religion.

Then I had a vision.

I could not turn from their revel in derision.

Then I saw the Congo, creeping through the black,

Cutting through the jungle with a golden track.

Then along that river bank a thousand miles

Tattoed cannibals danced in files;

Then I heard the boom of the blood lust song

And a thigh bone beating on a tin pan gong.

And "BLOOD" screamed the whistles and the fifes of the warriors,

"BLOOD" screamed the skull faced, lean witch doctors,

"Whirl ye the deadly voodoo rattle,

Harry the uplands, steal all the cattle,

Rattle rattle, rattle rattle, Bing! Boomlay, boomlay, boomlay, Boom,"

A roaring, epic, rag time tune

From the mouth of the Congo

To the Mountains of the Moon.

Death is an Elephant,

Torch eyed and horrible,

Foam flanked and terrible.

Boom, steal the pygmies,

Boom, kill the Arabs,

Boom, kill the white men,

Like the wind

Hoo, Hoo, Hoo.

Listen to the yell of Leopold's ghost

Burning in hell for his hand maimed host.

Hear how the demons chuckle and yell.

Cutting his hands off, down in Hell.

Listen to the creepy proclamation,

Blown through the lairs of the forest nation,

Blown past the white ants' hill of clay,

Blown past the marsh where the butterflies play:

"Be careful what you do,

Or Mumbo jumbo', God of the Congo,

And all of the other Gods of the Congo,

Mumbo jumbo will hoo doo you,

Mumbo jumbo will hoo doo you,

Mumbo jumbo will hoo doo you.