War in the Congo "Coltan"

[Space Varmint]

You're right, of course. I didn't read HiTech's post carefully enough.

Note that the Associated Press is trying to intimidate bloggers into believing otherwise: https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20080617/0740561432.shtml
According to them, any excerpt of 5 or more words from one of their articles must be paid for.

They have a wonderful little pricing page up, where they implore readers to "honor copyright", apparently skipping happily past the fact that copyright includes "Fair Use".

But yeah, posting the whole article is definitely well outside the bounds of fair use.


Torben

Yeah but the artical is a small fraction of the website. They should have been more explicit with their definition. I understood it to say the website configuration. Anyway. Tell them to sue me. Ever hear that phrase ".....squeeze blood out of a turnip". It was the content of the artical I was after. The issue of "Coltan" creating all that war and injustice. The fact that it is the same perpetrators of all the injustice in the world. Notice they used satellite imagery to discover where the Coltan was located?

 

[iperboreano]

Yeah but the artical is a small fraction of the website. They should have been more explicit with their definition. I understood it to say the website configuration. Anyway. Tell them to sue me. Ever hear that phrase ".....squeeze blood out of a turnip". It was the content of the artical I was after. The issue of "Coltan" creating all that war and injustice. The fact that it is the same perpetrators of all the injustice in the world. Notice they used satellite imagery to discover where the Coltan was located?

Hi, I'm new around here so go easy...

Copyright? My understanding is that copying 10% is fair use (provided it's not for profit), confirmed to me by library staff - I like to think they should know!

Coltan: it's a fascinating legend, part true part untrue. An example of how good stories are perpetuated without proper verification, just because, well, it makes a good story!

The civil war in the DRC was a complex event on a huge scale: the stealing and smuggling of coltan was one small contributing factor. Many aspects of this tragedy are generally accepted and undisputed: there was stealing, there was smuggling, there was invasion of the KB national park, there was expulsion or killing of wildlife including gorillas. We are led to believe that this has now ended, although I am sure stealing and smuggling has always been and will continue to be a popular acivity for some.

It has been difficult to get a clear picture of what went on for several reasons:
1) the civil war was a murky business by its very nature;
2) the industry that uses coltan is small in terms of volume and numbers of companies, therefore it is also commercially sensitive and secretive, adding to the murkiness;
3) coltan is an abbreviated name for the two minerals columbite and tantalite, a name only used in central Africa and which can thus easily give the impression that coltan only comes from there - because the same material is known by another name in the rest of the world!

From this whole murky mess, several misconceptions have arisen:
A) the value of the coltan trade has been quoted into the hundreds of millions of dollars, one of the unverified good stories: is this per year or over a number of years? How was this calculated? The way coltan is valued ($/lb (pound) of Ta2O5 (the metal oxide) contained) it is easy to get it wrong: even what should be reputable sources have been known to mix up lb and kg, oxide and pure metal, or worse still, forget to apply the % for the metal grade;
B) central Africa holds 80% of the world's coltan. I have tried and failed to follow this claim back to its source. Every journalist who bandies this 'fact' just quotes the previous journalist who used it, and so this fable takes on a life of its own. Could this be because of the confusion over the various names for the same mineral? The fact is that tantalite (what coltan actually is) mainly comes from Australia, with three other important sources being Brazil, Canada, Ethiopia and Mozambique. On the other hand I don't believe that the DRC only contributes 1% of the world's supply: lack of proper documentation, plus relabelling of DRC minerals as Rwandan or Ugandan once they cross the border will contribute to reducing the apparent contribution of the DRC;
C) electronics companies use coltan: not exactly! That's like saying that Pirelli makes copper wiring from lumps of ore. There are layers of companies involved here: coltan/tantalite is refined by processors to tantalum metal powder; cap manufacturers (e.g. Kemet, AVX) use the powder to make Ta caps; the electronics companies (Nokia, Sony et c.) use those caps.
D) it is impossible to know where coltan has come from: actually processors have a pretty good idea! If not already sourcing directly from the mine, the processors will be buying from traders who will at least be revealing which country the mineral came from (be that Brazil, Nigeria, Namibia et c.). It will probably be recorded on the transport documents!


One point in this thread is new to me: "satellite images" "showed" Africa contains 80% of the world's coltan? Sounds like a pretty nifty satellite, I think many company execs would give their right arm for access to such imagery! Exploration companies would be made redundant overnight: just point the satellite, take a snapshot and voilà. I'm sure satellites are useful in indicating surface characteristics of terrain and possibly with some elemental analysis, but that's not going to be a reliable method of determining reserves - only an indication that material XYZ is present in unknown quantity. A method which sounds similar is aerial radiometry (I forget the exact name) which identifies anomalies in radioactive elements which can indicate the presence of particular minerals.


I hope that helps shed some light on the coltan legend!

 

[Space Varmint]

It helps shed linght on the fact that you appear to have an agenda. Being in the electronics industry a long time, every time I look up a part almost, there is some reference to tantalum. Especially capacitors and processors....BIG business!

Yes the military industrial complex tend to have some nifty satellites since their technology is a couple of decades ahead of the general electronics scene. I doubt they would give said companies access to them until they start letting them fly the space shuttle first