Playstation 2 And Its African Conflict!

I was reading this extremely interesting article posted on Yahoo regarding Sony playstation. You see there's a component inside the game console that's causing concerns.

• According to Toward Freedom, during the 2000 launch of the PS2, the electronics giant was having trouble meeting consumer demand. To pump out more units, Sony required a significant increase in the production of electric capacitors, which are primarily made with tantalum. This helped drive the world price of the powder from $49/pound to a whopping $275/pound, resulting in the frenzied scouring of the Congolese hills known for being ripe with coltan.
  
  Sony has since sworn off using tantalum acquired from the Congo, claiming that current builds of the PS2, PSP and PS3 consoles are sourced from a variety of mines in several different countries.
  
  But according to researcher David Barouski, they're hardly off the hook.
  
  "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."
  
  Currently, the Playstation 2 is the best-selling video game console of all-time, having sold through over 140 million units.

From $49/poound to a whopping $275/pound??? Holy moly!

And with high price, comes greed at all costs! Sigh!

• 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.
  
  "Kids in Congo were being sent down mines to die so that kids in Europe and America could kill imaginary aliens in their living rooms," said Ex-British Parliament Member Oona King.

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