Blood Cellphones

A long, long time ago, I'd paid dramatic lip service to the issue of blood diamonds in only the second post of this blog.

Now here's an ad running on TV of late. I like the song.

Besides diamond mining, the other, rising scourge of Africa is undoubtedly Coltan mining. Coltan and derivatives, especially tantalite are important components in cell phones. Obviously, more people buy cell phones than diamonds. The lucrative demand and the willingness of companies to look the other way for better margins makes it the dangerous This is not a new finding, reports on this issue have been around since 2001 when the demand for computer chips and cell phones started to pick up again after the dot com bust.

I've been thinking of buying a phone since last month and have been tempted to buy a smart phone with which I can tweet and update my Facebook and this blog all on the go, maybe save up for a while and get an iPhone 4. Then you read stuff about workers committing suicides and blood cellphones.

So now when people ask me why I don't dump my piece of shit phone for a new one, instead of telling them the truth that I can't afford anything, I expound upon the suffering of people from Congo to China so that they can have their stupid fun on the go in Mumbai.