Melville House Books

In his New York Times column, Nicholas Kristof notes that an “ugly paradox of the 21st century is that some of our elegant symbols of modernity — smartphones, laptops and digital cameras” and yes, some ebook readers — “are built from minerals that seem to be fueling mass slaughter and rape in Congo.”

As he explains,

I’ve never reported on a war more barbaric than Congo’s, and it haunts me. In Congo, I’ve seen women who have been mutilated, children who have been forced to eat their parents’ flesh, girls who have been subjected to rapes that destroyed their insides. Warlords finance their predations in part through the sale of mineral ore containing tantalum, tungsten, tin and gold. For example, tantalum from Congo is used to make electrical capacitors that go into phones, computers and gaming devices.

Electronics manufacturers have tried to hush all this up. They want you to look at a gadget and think “sleek,†not “blood.â€

However, he notes that “now there’s a grass-roots movement pressuring companies to keep these ‘conflict minerals’ out of high-tech supply chains. Using Facebook and YouTube, activists are harassing companies like Apple, Intel and Research in Motion (which makes the BlackBerry) to get them to lean on their suppliers and ensure the use of, say, Australian tantalum rather than tantalum peddled by a Congolese militia.”

Here’s part of the effort, below.

Dennis Johnson is the founder of MobyLives, and the co-founder and co-publisher of Melville House.