http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/playstation-2-component-incites-african-war/1231745

According to a report by activist site http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/1352/1">Toward Freedom, for the past decade the search for a rare metal necessary in the manufacturing of Sony's Playstation 2 game console has fueled a brutal conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

At the center of the conflict is the unrefined metallic ore, coltan.

Allegedly, the demand for coltan prompted Rwandan military groups and western mining companies to plunder hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the rare metal, often by forcing prisoners-of-war and even children to work in the country's coltan mines.

"SONY's PlayStation 2 launch...was a big part of the huge increase in demand for coltan that began in early 1999," he explained. "SONY and other companies like it, have the benefit of plausible deniability, because the coltan ore trades hands so many times from when it is mined to when SONY gets a processed product, that a company often has no idea where the original coltan ore came from, and frankly don't care to know. But statistical analysis shows it to be nearly inconceivable that SONY made all its PlayStations without using Congolese coltan."

hmm wow

SOUTH AFRICA?? They are talking about Congo + It is in Central Africa.

^^sorry about that. it's Central Africa.
I meant C. Africa but my fingers typed South. Go figure.

While I realize Yahoo Videogames is of the highest journalistic credibility--especially on the plight of Africa and its benighted denizens--I'm going to have to ask for just a bit more evidence before I start believing something that sounds like it was made up by someone on an Xbox fan website.

10-year plan at it's finest.

I find this hard to believe.......

this reminds me of blood diamond great movie

LMFAO only on vg.

So a rare metal was necessary in the production of a console that ended up shipping over 120 million units.

I suspect a joke since they say that this stuff is in everything from cell phones to computers and yet they singled out the PS2 in the headline.

A little Internet research reveals that the story about Congo coltan mines being blamed for fueling conflict are true, but the mines produce less than 1% of the world's supply, so I would question the "nearly inconceivable" part.

If it's not a joke on purpose, the article is still a joke.