Reply #7: First, thanks for acknowledging my post about Congo Dirk39

[seemslikeadream]

I've written about Congo several times and no one responds. Have you any idea why? Is it just too horrific?

Speaking of civil wars the U.S. has had a hand in, and now George Bush Sr. reaping the benifits of (Barrick Gold), all for those presious minerials.

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is possibly the most mineral rich place on earth - though this has proved a curse to the people of the Congo. The Congo holds millions of tons of diamonds, copper, cobalt, zinc, manganese,uranium (the atomic bombs dropped on Hirochima and Nagaski were built using Congolese uranium), and coltan. Coltan, a substance made up of columbium and tantalum, is a particularly valuable resourse - use to make mobile phones, night vision goggles, fiber optics, and micro-capacitors.

Coltan looks like black mud, but is three times heavier than iron and only slightly lighter than gold. It is found in abundance in eastern Congo and can be mined with minimal equipment. Coltan is vital to the high tech economy. Wireless electronic communication would not exist without it. The "mud" is refined into tantalum - a metallic element that is both a superb conductor of electricity and extremely heat-resistant. Tantalum powder is a vital component in capacitors, for the control of the flow of current in miniature circuit boards. Capacitors are made of tantalum are found inside every laptop, pager, personal digital assistant, and mobile phone. Tantalum is also used in the aviation and atomic energy industries. A very small group of companies in the world process coltan. These include H.C. Starck(Germany,a subsidiary of Bayer), Cabott Inc. (US), Ningxia (China), and Ulba (Kazakhstan). The world's biggest coltan mines are in Australia and they account for about 60% of world production. It is generally believed, however that 80% of the world's reserves are in Africa, with DRC accounting for 80% of the African reserves.
http://www.corporatewatch.org.uk/newsletter/issue13/issue13_part3.htm

Three million lives have been lost in Congo since 1998 alone