“All left-wing parties in the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, because they make it their business to fight against something which they do not really wish to destroy… We all live by robbing Asiatic coolies, and those of us who are ‘enlightened’ all maintain that those coolies ought to be set free; but our standard of living, and hence our ‘enlightenment’, demands that the robbery shall continue”
George Orwell
In the 80-odd years since Orwell wrote those words, nothing has changed. “Enlightened” “progressives” still wring their hands over “colonialism”, while imposing on the world’s poorest people the sort of brutality that makes colonialism look like a benign aunt — all so the “progressives” can stroke their egos and fantasise that they’re “saving the planet”.
Recently, the Biden administration struck down plans for a major mining venture in the US which would have supplied minerals such as copper and cobalt which are vital to the Democrats’ planned transition to electric cars. Which guarantees that the minerals will instead continue to be sourced by vast armies of child labourers in the poorest nations on earth.
All left-wing parties in the highly industrialized countries are at bottom a sham, indeed.
A new series of images taken from inside mines in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where 90 percent of the world’s cobalt is mined and used to make the batteries that power our tech-led lives, raise uncomfortable questions.
Cobalt is the chemical element found in almost every tech gadget that uses a lithium-powered battery on the market today – a smartphone, tablet or laptop requires a few grams of it, while an electric vehicle requires 10kg.
Apple, Microsoft, Google, Tesla and others all insist that they hold cobalt suppliers to the highest of standards, and that they only trade with smelters and refiners who adhere to their codes of conduct.
The documented reality is quite to the contrary. Their “enlightenment” demands that the robbery continues.
Barefoot children covered in chemicals, endlessly smashing open rocks for $2-a-day; exhausted new mothers with their babies strapped to them, sifting through nets of rocks in the hopes of finding the precious cobalt.
Those are among the powerful images obtained by Siddharth Kara over the last several years in the Katanga region, that can be shared now ahead of the publication of his new book – Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives.
The book paints a damning picture of the desperate demand for cobalt in the West, and the deadly effects of it among African families.
Joseph Conrad called the Belgian Congo “the vilest grab for loot in the history of mankind”. But Conrad never lived to see the Climate Cult’s bloody thirst for cobalt.
‘The moral clock has been dialed back to colonial times.
‘They’re doing it for $2-a-day and for them, it’s the difference between whether or not they eat that day so they don’t have the option of saying no.’
Once again, the comfortable lifestyles of Western leftists means that the robbery of coolies must continue apace. Perhaps ironically, Orwell penned those words in an essay on Rudyard Kipling. Yet Kipling, the poet laureate of colonialism, would have been horrified by the green imperialism now blighting lives in the Congo.
‘The moral clock has been dialed back to colonial times,’ says Kara, who has spent years investigating child labor. He rejects the excuse by American tech companies that China runs many of the mines, and instead says they should lead efforts to crack down on child labor in the DRC.
Prolonged exposure to cobalt can lead to lung disease, deafness and, according to Kara who has spent years in the Congo researching the subject, birth defects and various forms of cancer.
‘This is blood diamonds multiplied by a thousand – diamonds aren’t toxic.
‘And you buy a diamond once, maybe twice, in your life, whereas western society can’t function for more than 24 hours without devices that rely on cobalt,’ he said.
Among his videos is one of two children, covered in toxic chemicals from the mine, smashing their rocks open.
They cannot be older than seven or eight.
YouTube
But you can’t see those kids from the tinted windows of an EV. EV owners are too busy smelling their own farts to care about such trivial stuff as African kiddies slaving in dangerous, brutal mines.
Besides, they’ve got a planet to save.
