... because I am a well-known cellphone hater:

But if coltan is driving Rwanda policy, and coltan is driven by cellphones...

I'm seeing a campaign like the campaign against diamonds. It's like everywhere along the line, cellphones violate something. Who needs 'em?

It would be interesting to track minerals in general on issues like this.

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." -- Mahatma Gandhi

but cell phones seem very useful. If we keep talking about this, cell phones can be built and recycled in a way that does not destroy the planet or lives.

At some point this war will find its way to YouTube and things will take a dramatic turn.

but all three of us have lots of tantalum capacitors - they're in virtually anything electronic that's small and not dirt cheap, which includes computers, auto electronics, iPods, and lots of other stuff. Probably not in your mini-stereo, or at least not in quantity, as they're pricey comapared to other caps.

Personally, I think this info is way out of date (and the Wikipedia article on coltan would seem to back that up). Tantulum caps were in short supply 8 or 9 years ago, meaning coltan might have beem more expensive then. We used to sell a lot ot tantalum caps, because we find and sell electronic components that are in short supply or obsolete. We still sell the occasional reel of tantalum caps, but they're not hard to find - we basically do arbitrage on parts that are plentiful in one place and short supply or long lead time somewhere else.

Also, according to the wikipedia article, the DRC supplies about 1% of the coltan produced worldwide. It's quite possible there was a situation where demand was approaching supply, and that 1% could have been turned into a lot of money at one time. Maybe it's still true, but I doubt it. In this economy, even smuggling doesn't pay. Component prices haven't been as high since Bush took office - almost to the day.

There are certainly problems in the Congo and the entire country of Africa. The Congo has lots of resources (copper is a big one, and peak copper is probably here already), but boycotting Nokia and Motorola isn't going to fix much, nor will it end the resource exploitation in third world countries that's accompanied by people exploitation - focusing on coltan in the Congo is highly selective.

I'd also be suspicious of the "US is looking for coltan" claim, as I doubt there is a significant domestic producer of tantulum caps or anything else that uses a lot of tantalum. Hasn't been for many years AFAIK. It's just as likely to be the Canadians, Aussies or others.

The same goes for cell phones - Mot is the only domestic owned producer AFAIK, but they were already doing production in China in 1996.

Pavlovian slip?

People don't seem to realize that the Rwandan civil war and genocide weren't the last battles; it simple shifted to the DRC and continued in a lower grade, but a war nonetheless. Another thing many don't realize is that the current Tutsi-heavy government benefits a great deal from the government of the DRC having to deal with Hutu rebels in the east of the DRC, and they have some of their own residents and militias in the DRC, themselves, to protect their borders.

This is a huge and complicated proxy war going on, and I don't know how it will be ended. It's so much bigger than natural resources.