Given that Congo is back in the news, I’m reposting this piece I wrote for SSG Music in 2011, which I noticed is no longer available online. In my contemporaneous post on this blog “Congo, Coltan, and Colonialism,” I provide some more historical and political context that didn’t fit into this piece. Congo has been…
by Joseph Sannicandro Joseph.Sannicandro@gmail.com As entertainment obessed consumers, we rarely ever think about where things come from, let alone the hidden costs of production. How is it that ethnic violence in central Africa has anything to do, causally, with my owning an iPhone or playing videogames? ——- The ravages of ethnic violence in the Congo,…