Katanga.

This is coolbert:

Featured item on the BBC World News last night is about child labor in the Congo.

Child labor being used for open pit mining n the Congo. A mine that produces copper and cobalt. The latter an essential mineral needed for high-technology manufacture.

Labor, the child labor included, working in the most deplorable conditions. Workers using pick and shovel labor to excavate a huge pit in the search for ore. Children as young as ten wade in filthy pits of water, stomping up and down with their feet in an "effort" to clean the minerals for assay. Looks like something you would have seen 5000 years ago in the days of the ancient Pharaohs of Egypt.

[if you have seen the Cecil B. De Mille version of the "Ten Commandments", you will remember the mud pit scene where the workers have to tread mud and straw for the material to make bricks. That is what we are talking about here. Except substitute ten year old children for adults!!]

At the end of the day, most of the workers are "paid". Paid according to the ore produced. Most of those kids get only enough money to buy food for the day. And that is that!

And who profits from all this?? Thuggish militias armed with AK-47's and foreign armies. The latter from Zimbabwe. The dictator Mugabe and his lickspittles profiting from the misery of others. How evil!!

"lick·spit·tle - - n. A fawning underling; a toady."

All this is occurring in Katanga province. A placed accursed with just enormous mineral wealth. A lot of those very minerals coveted the world over by high tech industries.

[Keep in mind that the original pitchblende order containing uranium that was used in the first atomic bomb project came from the Congo!!]

"Some readers may ask, 'How can these events still be occurring in the Twenty-First Century?"

NOT ONLY IS IT HAPPENING, IT IS GETTING WORSE!!

Katanga province. A place fought over repeatedly since the Congo gained independence in 1960. Among the groups contesting for control of Katanga have been:

* The Simbas. [Congolese rebels]

* The white mercenaries under the command of Mike Hoare and Bob Denard.

* Congolese rebels operating out of Angola. Aided and abetted by East Germans manning T-34 tanks. [this was the Kolwezi incident!]

* Now the various militias and foreign armies.

Very sad and evil both. That place is degenerating and reverting back to a primitive, savage time.

"What wonders hath GOD wrought!!" What evil hath MAN wrought!!

coolbert.