This is not your typical Mother's Day message.
We email, text and call each other from our Blackberry and iPhone regularly. We would have been Facebook friends if we had our own Facebook pages. And surely we would tweet each other if we became twitterers. But underlying all these dizzying 21st century communication tools is one of the saddest secrets in the world involving mothers and daughters. Innocently, inadvertently, we are using communication products that are powered by minerals (conflict minerals) that are fueling the highest rates of sexual violence in the world in a place called the Congo.
Congo is the most dangerous place in the world to be a mother or a daughter. We got together and made this video to explain why.
The very good news is that there is much we can do about this. Start by signing this petition to one of America's Mothers-in-Chief, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who visited the Congo and cares very much about the issue. The petition calls on Secretary Clinton to lead a process that removes conflict minerals from the supply chains of our electronics products, much like the system that removed blood diamonds from our jewelry and sweatshops from our clothing.
On this Mother's Day, as two momma's boys, we cherish our mothers extra special. Join us in cherishing the mothers and daughters of the Congo and taking a small step to protect them from some of the worst horrors in the world. Together we can use our consumer power to make our phones and laptops conflict-free and rape-free.
Javier Bardem is an Academy Award-winning actor and activist. John Prendergast is co-founder of the Enough Project and author of Unlikely Brothers.
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The passage, tucked into the bill's "Miscellaneous Provisions," will require thousands of U.S. companies to disclose what steps they are taking to ensure that their products, including laptops, cellphones and medical devices, don't contain "conflict minerals" from the Democratic Republic of the Congo."
Just one of the million things Democrats do legislatively for a better world, that no one even knows about.
Seriously. Rape, murder, and acts of inhumanity have absolutely nothing to do with geology (or communication tools) and everything to do with evil perpetrated by human beings.
For those who are interested, Johann Hari published an article in the HuffPo a month ago which called out the State Department for its inaction on conflict minerals:
We Are Not Being Told The Truth About Libya
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann-hari/we-are-not-being-told-the_b_846445.html
- OR -
http://goo.gl/F3eaZ
Finally, I hope whatever process is adopted for blacklisting conflict minerals is more effective than those ostensibly blacklisting sweatshops.
The fact of the matter is the UK is the 6th largest economy in the world, the NHS provides healthcare for ALL brits regardless of means, it is home to the largest financial center in the world (London), has lasted for centuries longer than the US has, is home to GlaxoSmithKline, BAE Systems, EADS, etc., and the home of the industrial and scientific revolutions of the past two centuries.
Darwin - Evolution, Newton - Newtonian mechanics, Maxwell - electomagnetism, Cavendish - physical chemistry, Cayley - aerodynamics, Faraday - electronics, Fleming - antibiotics, Berners-Lee - the WWW, Hawking - cosmology.
"In two ways the Congo's rubber boom had lasting impact beyond the territory itself. First, the system of exploitation established there became a model for colonial rule in other parts of central Africa. Many of the surrounding colonies also had rain forests rich in wild rubber—Portuguese-controlled northern Angola, the Cameroons under the Germans, and the French Congo, part of French Equatorial Africa, across the Congo River. Seeing what profits Leopold was reaping from forced labor, officials in these colonies soon adopted exactly the same system—including women hostages, forced male labor, and the chicotte—with equally fatal consequences.
The events in King Leopold's Congo also rippled beyond its borders in a more positive way: They gave birth to the twentieth century's first great international human rights movement ..."
http://www.enotes.com/genocide-encyclopedia/king-leopold-ii-congo
The seeds of this started with the crimes of the Belgian King Leopold. If interested:
http://www.enotes.com/genocide-encyclopedia/king-leopold-ii-congo
Women of Congo deserve a chance of safety; if a petition can begin that long road we should all sign it. It will only take a minute. I am not a huge fan of Hilary but believe she is very much on the side of women and children who face rape daily and live under circumstances even the poorest of Americans can't fathom. But..will Hilary throw away her magic phone? I don't know.
I wish our POTUS could discard his blackberry (I assume it requires these rare earth commodities that we now read so much about). If the price of hi-tech is women suffering, we should go back to old fashioned phones. guess..when pigs fly..
But, other readers..at least sign the petition, okay?