Wednesday, August 18, 2010

Madness Squared: Apple Sells 'Genocide Phones'

As I have previously reported, the bogus 'conflict diamonds' campaign has been extended via the Dodd-Frank Bill to now include all 'conflict minerals'.

In a recent op-ed, rough-diamond consultant, Jack Jolis, pointed out that the 'conflict diamonds' (aka 'blood diamonds') campaign is a fraud:

The fact is that most African diamonds are produced in places that are reasonably-to-perfectly peaceful (such as Botswana, Namibia and South Africa), whereas there are murderous African conflicts that rage elsewhere without the slightest "assistance" from diamonds (such as Rwanda, Uganda and the Sudan).


Alas, this simple truth is no match for the combined forces of liberal guilt and the commercial interests of a few players in the diamond industry. So the "blood diamond" charade has marched on unimpeded, passing through Congress (where I testified about the absurdity of the whole notion 10 years ago), through Hollywood in the hands of Leonardo DiCaprio (in "Blood Diamond"), and most recently last week with a supermodel's testimony in The Hague about her "dirty pebbles." In this faux-morality play, everyone has an assigned role.
This, of course, has not stopped governments from extending the nonsense to all minerals.

Since Apple, and other cell phone manufacturers, require tantalum and other minerals in their phones, we are now being told that these are 'genocide phones,' since the minerals they use may be minerals that are coming from a 'conflict' zone.

I am not making this up. Here's FT:
Widespread use of minerals from the region in electronics products has triggered headlines attacking companies such as Apple and Microsoft for selling “genocide phones”.
In truth anyone that is producing a product, including diamonds and minerals, is advancing society.

Even if these mad global regulators got the countries right that are actually at war, the only ones hurt by a ban on 'conflict' minerals are those who legitimately go to work to mine them. The leaders of such countries always find a way to get the money to keep their wars going.

In the U.S. as FT reports, business has now hired lobbyists to battle the ban on 'conflict' minerals:

US manufacturers are mounting a lobbying campaign over a provision slipped into the financial reform legislation requiring companies to declare products containing minerals from the Democratic Republic of Congo [and adjoining countries].


The Dodd-Frank act includes a clause which effectively classifies resources from Congo as “conflict minerals”, mimicking previous campaigns which targeted so-called “blood diamonds” from countries with poor human rights records.
Thus, another regulatory sector business will need to capture, which will ultimately be used after capture against consumers.

2 comments:

  1. Well, well, well, let's extend this "genocide" idea so far that it becomes a PR disaster material.

    Tantalum goes into capacitors, and those capacitors are in just about every single macroscopic electronic device in existance. So, let's drop the hammer and dispense some indiscriminate justice... Those troops fighting terror are loaded with electronics full of genocide tantalum capacitors. The police service uses radios and tasers that are pure genocide items full of tantalum capacitors. And now to dear readers, who have genocide TVs in their homes full of tantalum capacitors, and some of them are typing genocide stories on genocide computers, as those are too full of tantalum capacitors. And just to cover all bases, the satellites up there -- those GPS, all the satellite TV transponders, weather, Iridium and all the rest of spacecraft out there -- they are all beaming genocide upon us, as they are full of those capacitors too. There is nowhere to hide.

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  2. Time for Laurene Powell-Jobs to become a Bilderberger and end this nonsense.

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