For the Nobel laureate Denis Mukwege, who has treated more than 80,000 survivors of sexual violence by armed groups, the west displays double standards over the ‘stain on our humanity’
Apple in particular in terms of legal issues at the moment, but, and I have said this in other threads and no one seems to say otherwise, I am guessing that minerals from the DRC end up in everyone’s hardware. Apple doesn’t have anything so unique that it needs those conflict minerals and no one else does. Even if they don’t directly, how do you ensure every step on the supply chain to produce the hardware doesn’t use them?
Yea, I wanted to highlight that Apple is currently under scrutiny but it’s likely all the phone manufacturers (including Chinese ones which theoretically have access to domestic mining) along with battery manufacturers and computer manufacturers… basically everything from your Tesla to your toaster to your server blade rely on some amount of rare earth minerals - and it’s likely that laundered conflict minerals are in pretty much every modern device.
It’s cool as long as we get phones though, right? Apple in particular is in the middle of a shitstrom for using conflict sourced materials…
(Obviously, it’s not cool - but we need to aware of where the funding that keeps these shitheels in power comes from)
Apple in particular in terms of legal issues at the moment, but, and I have said this in other threads and no one seems to say otherwise, I am guessing that minerals from the DRC end up in everyone’s hardware. Apple doesn’t have anything so unique that it needs those conflict minerals and no one else does. Even if they don’t directly, how do you ensure every step on the supply chain to produce the hardware doesn’t use them?
Yea, I wanted to highlight that Apple is currently under scrutiny but it’s likely all the phone manufacturers (including Chinese ones which theoretically have access to domestic mining) along with battery manufacturers and computer manufacturers… basically everything from your Tesla to your toaster to your server blade rely on some amount of rare earth minerals - and it’s likely that laundered conflict minerals are in pretty much every modern device.
Minerals from the DRC are being mined in govt-backed mines supported by Russian mercenaries.
The Rwanda-funder M23 however are invading DRC over the border, stealing them and then on-selling from Rwanda.
So’it’s a whole extra can of worms.