Phones, laptops, games and DR Congo

[Sean]

Interesting that coltan's principle uses, driving the DRC war with 80% of world deposites there, with Western interests then selling arms to the factions to better persue the killing and enslaving populations in pursuit of it and other precious metals & stones, are mobile phones, laptop compters and playstation games- all the sick evils of postmodernism and worthlessly mindless horde-run democracies. The DRC war is the world's worst since WWII, five million dead, largely from disease and starvation from shattered societies in the east of the country, worse than Iraq, Vietnam, Korea, Cambodia etc, yet few care, especially as a chaotic situation is perfect for exploitation and lack of organized taxation etc, as per present Iraq and its oil. American and Western interests are happy and content in their double-think. And you psychos think it's me who's nuts. I was in Kinshasa in 2005...

Posted recently-
Though there are surely elite groups having great power behind visible world leaders, many of the objectionable trends in society particularly concerning the undermining of critical thought, international war and developing surveillance technology are better explained overall by postmodern developments in Western democracies.

The loss of the sense of hierarchical values, the tendencies toward uniformity of thought through the media's increasing influence and reach and promotion of mass culture, along with its direct proclamation of official world-views in place of critical journalism (and the reduction of art to more superficial terms of reception, such as in Radio 3's relinquishing of its high-art status), can be explained by the rise of the average ability of the population as the nature of democracies manifests itself. The average ability by definition is less critical, more receptive to media influence, and with more limited capacity for aesthetic and ethical experience and its concomitant creative and intuitive thinking.

It is the different nature of the masses from the more genuinely aware elite few with exceptional abilities, and the democratic mass's prevention of the elite occupying leadership roles by voting in populist figures to pander to their greed and short sightedness, that has corrupted Western societies. The masses don't want to be told that left to their own devices they create a society with poor values, so some of the negative social changes seem secretive, to the genuinely critical mind that can see them, but they've just arisen out of the system not from beyond it.

The elite groups behind leaders that do exist just provide the reality that the democratic masses already want: they want to loot the world as far as they can to maintain their standard of living and don't really care how many women and children their soldiers kill in distant other countries. The use of 80% of the resources by 20% of the population while the other 80% gets by on the other 20% is just fine for democratic peoples who vote in populist leaders who assure their living standards by implementation of exploitative foreign and controlling domestic policies issued by elite groups that the leaders really represent. The distinction between what leaders say and what is done is the psychological justification for the desires of the masses- when they're in ultimate control as in democracies.

[Sean]

http://johannhari.com/archive/article.php?id=863

...they had one motive, right from the beginning: to seize Congo's massive mineral wealth, to grab the coltan mine I am standing in now and thousands like it, and to sell it on to us, the waiting world, as we quickly flicked the channel away from the news of this war with our coltan-filled remote control. The other countries came in not because they believed in repelling aggression, but because they wanted a piece of the Congolese cake...

Oh, and the reason why this invasion was so profitable? Global demand for coltan was soaring throughout the war because of the massive popularity of coltan-filled Sony Playstations. As Oona King, one of the few British politicians to notice Congo, explains as we travel together for a few days, "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."

[Sean]

Today, we still buy, and the British government – along with the rest of the democratic world – obstructs any attempt to introduce legally enforceable regulations to stop corporations trading in Congolese blood.

[Michel]

I agree with almost all of this.

[bwv 1080]

What the hell does the civil war in the DRC have to do with anything other than the pathetic state of post-colonial Africa & the collapse of Mobutu's kleptocracy?  Tribal warfare was the rule before the Belgians imposed their reign of terror in the 19th century (of course it was the democratic masses that ended Leopold's atrocities there).  Add modern weapons to the mix (most of which were originally supplied by the Soviets) and that is the current situation.  Your pet theories do not add any explanatory power to the situation.