In last week\u2019s awareness newsletter<\/span><\/a> I left you this link<\/span><\/a> with a 54 minute documentary about the commerce of the mineral coltan<\/b> in Congo. <\/b>In case you haven\u2019t seen it, I recommend it again; it\u2019s very short and informative. You can load it, and watch it with someone while drinking mate<\/i> in between, or even alone; but if it\u2019s possible watch it.<\/i><\/p>\n <\/p>\n A couple of things in this documentary gave me sleepless nights\u2026<\/p>\n I was unable to sleep so I started to write to you.<\/p>\n In an interview with a businessman belonging to a mineral company, he tells Patrick Forestier \u2013 journalist and creator of the documentary \u2013<\/i>that when an FBI agent approached him to discuss about his businesses, after the release of a letter from the UN where there was a list of the companies that should cease their activities as they were encouraging, \u201cindirectly\u201d, the guerrillas in Congo, he asked if he knew that he was marketing Congolese coltan without knowledge about its origin\u2026<\/p>\n The businessman answered that he was aware of that, and \u201cwhat was the problem with it\u2026\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n Nothing, from the FBI they said or demanded NOTHING\u2026After the UN report, nothing happened. The businesses of extraction of resources in Congo were never interrupted<\/b>. That was the only commotion that occurred\u2026a little bit of media trouble, <\/i>the UN releases a letter, the world thinks that something is being done about it, but absolutely nothing has been \u2013 or is being<\/i> \u2013 done.<\/p>\n \u201cColtan is sent to China, they know it\u2019s African, but they don\u2019t care at all\u201d \u2013 <\/i>calmly narrates the businessman.<\/p>\n There are around 1000 million cell phones around the globe; half of them are made in China.<\/p>\n Marco Olivier German, Spanish activist for human rights, sheds some light on the subject:<\/p>\n \u201cWho does China produce for? China is the factory of the world, it produces for us. The businesses that produce in China generally are subsidiaries of occidental businesses. It\u2019s easy to say that the problem is the Chinese people, but the Chinese people are us. The economy is globalized; we cannot differentiate between occidental businesses, China and other players. Everything is interdependent<\/span><\/b>.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n Therefore, once again, the problem doesn\u2019t sum up to one country, a State policy, a measure taken by the UN, no. The problem comes from all of us, from a globalized problem, from a moral and cultural matter. What most shocked me about this documentary, was a moment in which the journalist asks the people in charge of a Congolese coltan distributor, \u201cwho determines the price of the mineral?\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n The guys laugh in his face\u2026\u201dYou, white people determine the price when you buy your cell phones\u2026\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n And what happens in our country? We buy a cell phone and our conscience is left partially satisfied, because the sticker which is stuck to the side of the cell phone\u2019s box says \u201cmade in Tierra del Fuego. Argentine Industry.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00bfReal<\/i> Argentine Industry?<\/p>\n No\u2026 because the reality is that the industrial factory found in R\u00edo Grande, Tierra del Fuego, is only an assembling one\u2026 Nothing is produced locally, simply more and more ships arrive to the faraway southern ports, where only a few question, where only a few will wonder, where do the raw materials come from?<\/b>…Guess\u2026<\/p>\n Quoting an article<\/a> that refers to this subject, \u201conly the Styrofoam and the stamps are products of national industry. The rest is brought from China in assembly kits<\/i>\u201d. Unbelieving, I called a friend that lives in R\u00edo Grande\u2026 \u201cIt\u2019s a shame, what happens here, no one knows anything and the only thing that arrives to the province are the foreign raw materials and in the factories they build everything as if it was a great puzzle<\/i>.\u201d<\/p>\n In an article titled \u201c<\/span>Citizenship participation, a key tool for the environment<\/span><\/a>\u201d, Julieta Caporaletti highlights \u201c<\/span>the need for every citizen to access public information in order to achieve an individual awareness, which as a whole results in a permanently active and attentive society, able to react to every situation which could be considered unfavorable or harmful, becoming not only the best agent of political control that could exist but also the main source of proposals\u201d.<\/i><\/p>\n And she highlights 2 activities (proposed by Doctors Robert Saba and Mart\u00edn Bohmer) for the citizen to be able to actively participate in society\u2019s reconfiguration, which I share below:<\/span><\/p>\n 1. <\/i><\/b>The participation in non governmental organizations\u00a0<\/b>that <\/b>put <\/b>pressure on the political power for certain interests to be taken into account (environmental rights, rights of women, children\u2019s rights, etc.) \u2013 at the same time, this action is deeply related to the concept of changing the social \u201cpyramid\u201d into a \u201crhombus\u201d, concept which we have been coining from Ploff Awareness<\/span><\/a>, and in several newsletters, such as the one where we tried to search some objectivity to GDP<\/span><\/a><\/i><\/p>\n 2. Citizen participation in the government\u2019s decision making process in a formal and institutionalized way.<\/b> There are different legal instruments that are the source of this participation, amongst them we can find: public hearings, popular initiative, referendums, plebiscite, etc. –<\/p>\n Therefore, today\u2019s proposal is obvious and simple: we have to try to do one of both things\u2026At least some time, a percentage, a little bit of our routine has to be redirected towards the restoration of strong bonds with nature. And in order to do this, we have to keep informed; we have to STUDY about it, read, search for information, self-intrigue ourselves, and stop wasting our time with banalities\u2026<\/p>\n There are a lot of environmental laws<\/b> in our country. Some of them we presented in the Awareness Newsletter N\u00ba 131<\/a>, but not everyone knows about them. The compliance of these laws is not only to claim to the politicians to do what they have to do\u2026 The compliance of these laws would be a natural consequence of a generalized request from the people. As Deepak Chopra says, people are doing what they can, given their levels of awareness\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n That\u2019s why we should spread our voice, inform ourselves, for this claim to be so generalized, so broad, that change would be literally inevitable<\/i>\u2026. If our claim is Total, Massive, then we would have to change; there wouldn\u2019t be any other option.<\/p>\n If we change our culture, if we manage to change our habits as consumers, without a politician proposing it from above as a magical solution, but simply because ALL OF US want change and be heard, then everything would be easier. Because if the voice of the people is the one that shouts change, then politicians have no other option<\/i> but to adjust themselves to this change. Politics should reflect the needs of society, and not the other way round.<\/p>\n At the end of last year, we were asking ourselves if we Want to Change<\/span><\/a>. <\/i><\/b>And we mentioned the situation in the Amazon Forest in Ecuador, where measures are being taken in order to extract oil from the Yasun\u00ed Reserve, home to 80% of the planet\u2019s biodiversity. In a documentary about the \u201cindigenous good living world view\u201d <\/b>of the <\/b>aboriginal peoples in the reserve, click here to watch it<\/span><\/a>, the EX-minister for Energy and Mining of Ecuador said a few words that summarize today\u2019s newletter:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n \u201cThe challenge isn\u2019t simply to wait for the government to obey the Constitution, but for society to TAKE POSSESSION of the Constitution.\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n Until next week,<\/b><\/p>\n Brian Longstaff.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Ps. Pictures extracted from Google, except for the one with the social \u201cpyramid\/rhombus\u201d, that I made with Paint for that newsletter. On the other hand, only in one week, the documentary about coltan was uploaded 3 times to youtube and then eliminated\u2026if the link isn\u2019t online, you can look for the documentary by writing \u201cPatrick Forestier Coltan\u201d in Youtube\u2019s searcher and it appears.<\/p>\n Ps 2. Special thanks to Federico di Pietro for his contribution with the pdf. on Citizenship Participation.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The need for a citizenship participation. (And not necessarily through politics) In last week\u2019s awareness newsletter I left you this link with a 54 minute documentary about the commerce of the mineral coltan in Congo. In case you haven\u2019t seen it, I recommend it again; it\u2019s very short and informative. You can load it, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2575,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[654,662,665,668,472,661,664,666,672,671,318,669,343,670,667,663],"class_list":["post-2576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-boletin","tag-coltan","tag-congo","tag-constitucion","tag-deepak-chopra","tag-derecho-ambiental","tag-ecuador","tag-el-buen-vivir","tag-environmental-law","tag-julieta-caporaletti","tag-martin-bohmer","tag-oil","tag-patrick-forestier","tag-petroleo","tag-roberto-saba","tag-the-good-living","tag-yasuni"],"yoast_head":"\n![\"BA](\"https:\/\/ploff.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/BA-145-Congo-ni\u00f1os-trabadores.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"BA](\"https:\/\/ploff.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/BA-145-China-celulares.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"ba](\"https:\/\/ploff.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/ba-145-Fabricado-en-T-del-F.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"BA](\"https:\/\/ploff.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/BA-134-ESQUEMA-en-INGLES.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\n![\"BA](\"https:\/\/ploff.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/02\/BA-145-Medio-pan-y-un-libro.jpg\")
<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n