Help Raise Awareness: We are sharing the compelling video and article below with our readers in order to bring awareness to the fact that the electronic gadgets, video games, smartphones and computers we prize so much are helping to fund a brutal war and genocide in the African Republic of Congo.
Now that you know the truth think twice before shelling out $400 plus to purchase these items. You can make a difference, you can help end the war. Demand accountability from manufacturers like Apple, Intel and RIM, demand that they use conflict free minerals to manufacture their products. Visit raisehopeforCongo.org and add your name to the petition.
"An ugly paradox of the 21st century is that some of our elegant symbols of modernity — smartphones, laptops and digital cameras — are built from minerals that seem to be fueling mass slaughter and rape in Congo...
I’ve never reported on a war more barbaric than Congo’s, and it haunts me. In Congo, I’ve seen women who have been mutilated, children who have been forced to eat their parents’ flesh, girls who have been subjected to rapes that destroyed their insides. Warlords finance their predations in part through the sale of mineral ore containing tantalum, tungsten, tin and gold. For example, tantalum from Congo is used to make electrical capacitors that go into phones, computers and gaming devices.
Electronics manufacturers have tried to hush all this up. They want you to look at a gadget and think “sleek,” not “blood.”
Yet now there’s a grass-roots movement pressuring companies to keep these “conflict minerals” out of high-tech supply chains. Using Facebook and YouTube, activists are harassing companies like Apple, Intel and Research in Motion (which makes the BlackBerry) to get them to lean on their suppliers and ensure the use of, say, Australian tantalum rather than tantalum peddled by a Congolese militia.
Please help make a difference share this video and article with your friends, co-workers and family members.
What are your thoughts? Leave a comment.
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