It’s a risky business you enter in when you purchase a product, and not just when you’re rolling with NIKE with their child labor-made shoes or that lovely diamond you’ve got around your neck mined by an enslaved people in Africa – what we’re now to understand is that its possible, though not confirmed, that the vast majority of the top-name manufacturers your gadgets come from are involved in, in one way or another, the “conflict materials” trade. You may know this term from the movie Blood Diamond, released a few years ago starring Leonardo Dicaprio and Djimon Hounsou, or Kanye West’s song “Diamonds” from right around the same time as the release of that movie – the absolutely evil conditions you saw or heard in those bits of media are very likely continuing through to the bits that make up your favorite MP3 player, speakers, and tablets you’re using right this second.
