The Congo's Midas Curse - Meet the men and women who bring you the bling

[polly7]

The Congo's Midas Curse
Meet the men and women who bring you the bling. —Marcus Bleasdale/VII

http://motherjones.com/photoessays/2010/02/congo-photo-essay/child-labor-congo-gold-mining-pit

........To produce this photoessay, which accompanies Hochschild's piece in the print magazine, Marcus Bleasdale spent eight years documenting the lives and conflicts of the Congolese. His dedication has resulted in two photo books, One Hundred Years of Darkness and, out in March, Rape of a Nation—the source of the images you see here. It's easy for Americans to remain oblivious to the troubles of people in faraway lands, but Bleasdale's photos manage to pierce our cynical gaze. And that's only fair, since American consumers and investors are among those who profit most from Congo's misery—be they the Wall Street mogul who owns 12 percent of mining multinational AngloGold Ashanti, or simply everyday folks who like electronic gadgets and sparkly jewelry.

In the foreword to Rape of a Nation, bestselling novelist John le Carré sums up the country's human hell as:

...fourteen hundred and fifty tragedies every day. It is countless more than that if you include the orphaned, the bereaved, the widowed, and all the ripples of truncated lives that spread from a single death. It is you and me and our children and our parents, if we had had the bad luck to be born into the world this book portrays. But Congo has one secret that is hard to pass on if you haven’t learned it at first hand. Look carefully and you will find a gaiety of spirit and a love of life that, even in the worst of times, leave the pampered Westerner moved and humbled beyond words.

Blood and Treasure

http://motherjones.com/politics/2010/02/congo-gold-adam-hochschild

As far back as Congo's history is recorded, the wealth from this vast natural treasure house has flowed almost entirely overseas, leaving some of the planet's best-endowed land with some of its poorest people. I have often heard Congolese friends say, "We wouldn't have so much trouble if we weren't so rich."

Dealers in mining towns buy diamonds, gold, and whatever else locals can wrest from the ground by hand.

Of all the minerals to be found here, none has for so long lit up the eyes of foreigners as the yellow metal that has shaped the course of conquest on almost every continent. And today, with worldwide economic troubles and ever-rising demand from electronics manufacturing (see "The Scary Truth About Your iPhone&quot sending its price to unimagined heights, a new gold rush is in the making in Congo. Some of the richest goldfields in all of Africa lie up this dirt road, which begins some 350 miles east of the turnaround point of Conrad's nightmare steamboat trip up the Congo River. The journey there, I hope, will be a way of seeing some of this country's tragic—for there is no other word for it—wealth at its point of origin, before it vanishes into jewelry stores and bank vaults and electronics plants in Europe and China, New York and California. .................

http://mediastorm.com/publication/rape-of-a-nation


Diamonds and gold — vast natural resources that could enrich a nation — are a curse in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where the Congolese people have suffered the largest death toll since the second world war.

The conflict between warlords and armed rebels for control of these resources have plunged the citizens into a life of poverty, sexual violence, and war. Some 45,000 people die each month as a result.

The actual miners who extract the sought-out treasures have no access to a living wage, societal safety, or simple medical care, while their leaders enrich themselves and allow the misery to continue.

Marcus Bleasdale traces how the west's consumer appetite for these resources have led to such sub-human conditions for the Congolese, and poses that we might make a difference — at the jewelry counter — simply by asking: where does that ring come from?

Published: January 22, 2008

[JustAnotherGen]

1. Rec

And Please support the Conflict Minerals Resolution portion of the Dodd-Frank Act. I work for a company that is four levels downstream from the 'source' - and we are engaging in weekly industry/electronic conferences to find a path forward to adhere to the CMR.

[polly7]

2. Good for you!

I didn't know a lot about the CMR but did some reading here: http://www.ipc.org/ContentPage.aspx?pageid=Conflict-Minerals

Yes, I very much hope it has a lot of support.

[Blue_Tires]

3. bookmarked