Major Electronics Firms Support Ending Use of "Conflict Minerals" 198
tburton writes "The US House of Representatives yesterday released the Conflict Minerals Trade Act (HR 4128) to try and end the international trade of tungsten, tantalum and col-tan, the mining of which is accused of fueling violent rape and murder in eastern Congo. Since the very same minerals power the most popular consumer electronics from HP, Verizon, Nokia, RIM and Intel, the Information Technology Industry Council has quickly signed a statement of support. Advocacy groups are hopeful these commitments prove to be meaningful as consumers begin to question the end result of the supply chains powering their favorite gadget."
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Hardly surprising (Score:5, Informative)
Well, they could care. I don't know about the other minerals, but at least tungesten can be mined from Portugal, where... well, let's say things don't work as they do in Congo.
Re:This will do nothing to end the "conflict". (Score:2, Informative)
Re:This will do nothing to end the "conflict". (Score:0, Informative)
And what is politics about if not the distribution of power and wealth? (Remember that the minerals are making the warlords richer and funding the mayhem.)
And it won’t solve the problem completely, but it will put pressure on to start towards a solution. And this is a good thing. Especially when the alternative is to turn a blind eye and pretend nothing is happening.
An imperfect solution is better than nothing.
Fungible Resources (Score:5, Informative)
Hmmm, does anyone in Congress know what a fungible resource is?
Basically, there's no way to know if the tungsten in your product (or even in your supply chain) came from the Eastern Congo, or pretty much anywhere else.
If the price for "tungsten" goes up appreciably, then Eastern Congo "tungsten" will just show up indirectly from other sources.
Re:Just let me know... (Score:2, Informative)
Easy.
Non-violent rape happens when your partner consents.
Non-violent murder happens in assisted suicide.
col-tan (Score:3, Informative)
Had to look that one up...
It's an abbreviation ("coltan", actually) for columbite-tantalite, the primary ore from which niobium (formerly columbium) and tantalum are refined.
The summary should have stuck to elements rather than mixing elements and ores. I'm sure most of have head or niobium and tantalum, but "col-tan" ???
Re:Hardly surprising (Score:5, Informative)
Not only that; there are a lot of unexploited Tungsten sources in the United States; one supposes they could stop nickel-and-diming to death extraction industries here and we could probably produce them a lot more cheaply than the Congo; doing business in a war zone is expensive.
I also just checked Wikipedia, and I think this subject is sufficiently non-controversial/political that they will give accurate information; it looks like China produces several times the amount of Tungsten as the rest of the world _combined_.
Re:Just let me know... (Score:3, Informative)
If the partner consents, it's not rape.
What about statutory rape, like the 18yrold with 17yrold cases?
And assisted suicide may as well be called "statutory murder", given the justification for outlawing it.
Re:Hardly surprising (Score:2, Informative)
Lol, I think that when you put a Niton scanner on a bit of aircraft grade Titanium as I did only last week ,be it 6-4 ,10-2-3,5-5-5-3 and others you will find tantalum is indeed alloyed there and in other metals including various steels. Probably has something to do with engineering them for machining, welding or the hot part of jet engines where 6-4 is found in abundance and is welded and does get hot.
True I've only found out Africa brings us around 1% of W (tungsten) but still our interference in world affairs is just some financial bait n switch smokescreen for the dual porpoises of buying liberal votes and/ or some other nefarious gain.
Not sure I would trust doing business with anyone but Portugal out of that rogues gallery tho.
Either way adding more trash legislation is like adding yet another orifice for us to be reamed with later by left or right interests.
Now whose rant looks stupid?
Hate to be a grammar nazi.. (Score:5, Informative)
Seriously people, learn your grammatically-correct English!
"... to try and end ..." should be "... to try to end ...". Try is the verb, 'try to' is the proper way of using said verb in a sentence. Otherwise, you're combining the two on the same subject.
I'm going to try international trade of tungsten and end the international trade of tungsten.
OR
I'm going to try to end the international trade of tungsten.
Re:Just like conflict diamonds? (Score:3, Informative)
You make it sound like all the diamond mines in Canada are a sham. What is with the quotations? I find that to be a very odd stance as I've worked in one of those aforementioned "mines" and it's not a bunch of people blowing rainbows out of their ass waiting for the next plane full of conflict diamonds to land on the ice road.