Well aside from the obvious authorities, by the authority of Coltan.
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You see these neat little things we like to type our vociferous opinions on, hit submit, and have them broadcast to a world of interesting people cost a lot more than the money we shell out to purchase them.
They're made of bits and pieces from here and there and those bit and pieces are fashioned from resources provided by Mother Earth.
As most, if not all, wars are centered around competing for natural resources ... this one
is will be no different.
In the Congo, a decade-old conflict has come to be known as "The PlayStation War," according to a fascinating report in Toward Freedom.
The name came about because of a black metallic ore called coltan. "Coltan is a metal that conducts heat unusually brilliantly. It is contained in your mobile, your laptop, your son's PlayStation - and 80 percent of the world's supplies sit beneath the Democratic Republic of Congo," notes a 2006 report in the Independent. Nearly all of the the eight African nations and 25 militias involved in the region's conflict were after the precious substance. "This war has been dismissed as an internal African implosion. In reality it is a battle for coltan, diamonds, cassiterite and gold, destined for sale in London, New York and Paris."
Worse, Rwandan troops and rebels win the DRC were using prisoners-of-war and children to mine for the precious metal. "Kids in Congo were being sent down mines to die so that kids in Europe and America could kill imaginary aliens in their living rooms," former British MP Oona King told the Independent.
Sending money over there to buy people off to try and buy peace is the first stage I suppose. But ultimately the "aid" is geared towards preserving the machine that produces that which we consume.
Kind of makes you think the only righteous ones in the western world are the Amish, doesn't it.
