The PS2 War

Remember in 2000 when SONY was having "manufacturing issues" with their PS2, delaying shipment of the gaming system everyone couldn't wait to get their hands on. As it turns out they were short on a certain electric capacitors, made from tantalum which is able to withstand extreme heat. The release of the PS2 followed America's surge to have a cell phone in every hand, leaving tantalum hard to find. Making prices for tantalum sky rocket from $49.00 a pound to $275.00 a pound. Luckily for us, the ignorant masses of Western Civilization, SONY found a source of coltan, of which tantalum can be extracted, in the Congo. Not so lucky for the poor people of the area; who we will, once again, exploit. The Rwandan Army stormed their western neighbors, enslaving the local population, and forcing women and children to work in the coltan mines. The human rights group Towards Freedom, and newspaper The First Post, claim this illegal export of coltan from the Democratic Republic of the Congo has financed the recent conflict in the Congo that has resulted in death of an estimated 5.4 million people since 1998. SONY now claims they are no longer buying their tantalum, from sources that extract it from coltan ore mined in the Congo. Yet, most of SONY's gaming devices are assembled by separate companies and then sold to SONY, so they can't be to sure.

What is sure is that in the early 2000's when us gamers where killing people on the PS2, we were killing people in real life as well.