: Goldman Sachs, the merchant bank, calls cobalt ‘the new gasoline’ but there are no signs of new wealth in the DRC, where the children haul the rocks brought up from tunnels dug by hand.
Adult miners dig up to 600ft below the surface using basic tools, without protective clothing or modern machinery. Sometimes the children are sent down into the narrow makeshift chambers where there is constant danger of collapse.
Cobalt is such a health hazard that it has a respiratory disease named after it – cobalt lung, a form of pneumonia which causes coughing and leads to permanent incapacity and even death.
Even simply eating vegetables grown in local soil can cause vomiting and diarrhoea, thyroid damage and fatal lung diseases, while birds and fish cannot survive in the area.
No one knows quite how many children have died mining cobalt in the Katanga region in the south-east of the country. The UN estimates 80 a year, but many more deaths go unregistered, with the bodies buried in the rubble of collapsed tunnels. Others survive but with chronic diseases which destroy their young lives. Girls as young as ten in the mines are subjected to sexual attacks and many become pregnant.
1) International mining has some of the most powerful lobbies against regulation in the US and EU. The more of a firm stance we can take for operation and safety standards at mines across the world, the better. Plenty of conservatives and paid politicians however insist on removing regulation.
2) As others pointed out the mines for rare-earth elements are used in all rechargeable batteries, the vast majority of which are in portable electronics. Electric cars being so blatantly made the story's bogeyman by the Mail hearkens back to 1920s yellow journalism – regardless of political slant (they could have just as easily made Hummer battery cells the villain), it is a pattern of making truth secondary to spin. 1920s-30s yellow journalism peaked btw with papers making up stories wholesale, notoriously with the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times inventing months of stories about a giant hawk that was abducting and eating puppies and homeless babies in Grant Park, to the extent that the local Boy Scouts started a 24-hour "hawk watch" in the park.
James Morgan
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Michael Perez
Nothing new. In the Victorian era British children were sent down mines. Any industrialising country uses child labour. In fact every society but our own uses child labour. And pretty soon (100 years or so) the West will be using child labour again.
Anthony Thompson
I've heard about this, but it sounds odd, because kids aren't good for hard labor.. do I smell leftist propaganda here?
Josiah Torres
Feels good knowing the tablet i shit post from was made with african child slave labor. Makes me feel like just one of the yuppies.
Michael Harris
Niggers are made to work? How horrible.
Gabriel Clark
Whew there, Muhammad, don't get ahead of yourself.
Sebastian Rodriguez
They did use child labor, before the idea of workers rights and children going to school regularly came in to play. We probably won't be using child labor much again, because r2d2 is on it's way to take everyone's jobs. Fuck, they even have some ai's taking over much of some ceo's tasks. People that aren't needed, lack power, have no connections, or have little money are screwed.
Gavin Gonzalez
Oy vey! Think of the children! Why doesn't FOSTA protect them? Shut down free speech! Free speech is hate speech! Prevent another Holocaust!
Bentley Murphy
They better work twice as hard because I want another ecar.
Gavin Thomas
your age is showing old fag
Jackson Lewis
I don't fucking care. If they weren't working in the mines they would just be shooting, robbing and raping each other, at least with this job they can be productive and useful in some way. How the fuck is this the mines fault? It's just niggers being niggers.
Thomas Garcia
I don't see the problem here. MNiggers should come up with some good work themselves instead of crying how unfair it is for decades. Oh wait, they can't
Jose Scott
You're a yuppy too. Upper middle class, raised on adderal or ritalin. Probably still on it…
Aiden Cooper
Casualties of the global warming myth.
Leftists have killed hundreds of millions, and tortured many more, with their shitty ass policies.
David Perez
It's not my fucking job to make sure every person follows the rules along the way. Why is no one punishing the mine owners? That's right, because everyone would rather punish the consumer.
Liam Foster
Who gives two shits?
Ayden Moore
Well duh, Africa is known for using communist ideologies up to this day.
Aiden Ramirez
They should be picking cotton
Parker Mitchell
Gonna jump down Turn around Pick a bale of cotton Gonna jump down Turn around Pick a bale a day Gonna jump down Turn around Pick a bale of cotton Gonna jump down Turn around Pick a bale a day Oh, lordy Pick a bale of cotton Oh, lordy Pick a bale a day Oh, lordy Pick a bale of cotton Oh, lordy Pick a bale a day I said Me and my buddy gonna pick a bale of cotton Now Me and my buddy gonna pick a bale a day I said Me and my buddy gonna pick a bale of cotton Now Me and…
Isaac Long
When I was young I used to wait On Massa and hand him de plate; Pass down de bottle when he get dry, And brush away de blue-tail fly. Jim crack corn I don't care, Jim crack corn I don't care, Jim crack corn I don't care, Ole Massa gone away.
Den arter dinner massa sleep, He bid dis niggar vigil keep; An' when he gwine to shut his eye, He tell me watch de blue-tail fly. Jim crack corn, &c.
An' when he ride in de arternoon, I foller wid a hickory broom; De poney being berry shy, When bitten by de blue-tail fly. Jim crack corn, &c.
One day he rode around de farm, De flies so numerous dey did swarm; One chance to bite him on the thigh De debble take dat blue-tail fly. Jim crack corn, &c.
De poney run, he jump an' pitch, An tumble massa in de ditc' He died, an' de jury wonder'd why De verdic was de blue-tail fly Jim crack corn, &c.
Dey laid 'im under a 'simmon tree, His epitaph am dar to see: 'Beneath dis stone I'm forced to lie, All by de means ob de blue-tail fly.' Jim crack corn, &c.
Ole massa gone, now let 'im rest, Dey say all tings am for de best; I neber forget till de day I die, Ole massa an' dat blue-tail fly Jim crack corn, &c.
Levi Myers
What's funny is that I can see cotton plantations popping up in some African countries
Joseph Bennett
< While a smartphone battery uses no more than 10 grams of refined cobalt, an electric car needs 15kg (33lb). This really goes for most of the new technologies that greens have a boner for: solar panels, electric cars, and smart phones. They all use rare-earths dug up in shithole countries.
Parker Murphy
who cares lmao
Hudson Reed
do you guys ever think that jews see us the way we see niggers?
Jews are inferior even to niggers moron. At least some niggers built their own states and their own civilizations, and didn't have the UK give it to them like the Jews.
Aaron Williams
Next you're going to tell us Drumpf put the tooth fairy in prison.
Nathan Richardson
that's just because they are niggers
Alexander Harris
>Goldman Sachs, the (((merchant))) bank
fix'd that for ya
Carter Mitchell
Why blame the consumer instead of the producer? Oh, right because porkie is never at fault. #prolerevolt #UBI #SingularityisNear
Brayden Morgan
Kids are great for hard labour. They fit in spaces that adults cant. Which is why in Victorian england they were used as chimney sweeps, miners helpers, rat catchers, and various jobs in factories that usually involved darting around on the floor between moving machinery to clean up byproduct that collected and could clog machines and was sometimes flammable.
Ayden Lee
Nobody cares about children
We've all got our own problems. Let them figure it out for themselves.
You needed a crutch to study? You're no better than a nigger.
Leo Allen
I also thing politics is important
Jaxson Nelson
I like trains
Owen Robinson
...
David Nguyen
Don't we have a horrible time separating that shit from Zinc because they chemically act like damn near the same element from weight to properties? I recall reading about how there's a shit ton of bodybuilders and hippies who end up getting cobalt poisoning because of ODing on Zinc supplements that couldn't properly separate their cobalt from their zinc.