Why I don’t want a PS2–and you shouldn’t either

I should be getting ready for work but I happened to find THIS ARTICLE and had to share.  If you don’t have time to read it, basically it is talking about Sony using a rare unrefined metal to make it’s Playstations.  It is called coltan and it is broken down into a powder called tantalum which is a neccessary component in the game consoles.  One of the places that it is found is the Congo and apparently children were sent down into mines (sometimes to their deaths) to get this stuff.  Sony’s use of it made the international price for it skyrocket.

And what does Sony have to say about it?  Well, they deny it.  Of course.  They claim that they now receive their tantalum from ‘several sources’.  So basically they are trying to literally wash the blood off their hands.  The article points out that it is nearly inconceivable that Sony could produce ALL of it’s game consoles without ever using any coltan that was mined in the Congo.  As the author of the article puts it, Rwandan children have (and are) dying so that children in Europe and America can play games.  How incredibly sad.  What in the world has our world come to?