By Jeffrey Clark | Fox News

The Cobalt Mines (modern slaves )

A Harvard visiting professor and modern slavery activist exposed the “appalling” cobalt mining industry in the Congo on a recent episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience” that went viral. The video has already racked up over one million views and counting.

Siddharth Kara, author of “Cobalt Red: How The Blood of The Congo Powers Our Lives,” told podcast host Joe Rogan that there’s no such thing as “clean cobalt.’”

“That’s all marketing,” Kara said.

Podcast giant Joe Rogan reacted to a guest’s stories of the cobalt mining industry in a recent episode. (The Joe Rogan Experience/Spotify)

When asked by Rogan if there was any cobalt mine in the Congo that did not rely on “child labor” or “slavery,” the Harvard visiting professor told him there were none.

“I’ve never seen one and I’ve been to almost all the major industrial cobalt mines” in the country, Kara said.

One reason for that is that the demand for cobalt is exceptionally high: “Cobalt is in every single lithium, rechargeable battery manufactured in the world today,” he explained.

As a result, it’s difficult to think of a piece of technology that does not rely on cobalt to function, Kara said. “Every smartphone, every tablet, every laptop and crucially, every electric vehicle” needs the mineral.

The Democratic Republic of the Congo is one of the poorest nations in the world. (AP Photo/Clarice Butsapu)

“We can’t function on a day-to-day basis without cobalt, and three-fourths of the supply is coming out of the Congo,” he added. “And it’s being mined in appalling, heart-wrenching, dangerous conditions.”

But “by and large the world doesn’t know what’s happening” in the Congo, Kara said.

“I don’t think people are aware of how horrible it is,” Rogan agreed.

The Biden administration recently entered into an agreement with the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia to bolster the green energy supply chain, despite the DRC’s documented issues with child labor.

Cobalt initially “took off because it was used in lithium-ion batteries to maximize their charge and stability,” Kara explained. “And it just so happened that the Congo is sitting on more cobalt than the rest of the planet combined,” he added.

Men work in a gold mine in Chudja, northeastern Congo, one of the areas in which so-called “conflict minerals” are mined. (AFP Photo / Lionel Healing)

As a result, the Congo, a country of roughly 90 million people, became the center of a geopolitical conflict over valuable minerals. “Before anyone knew what was happening, [the] Chinese government [and] Chinese mining companies took control of almost all the big mines and the local population has been displaced,” Kara said. Subsequently, the Congolese are “under duress.”

British rapper Zuby recommended that his nearly one million followers watch the interview.

“This latest Joe Rogan Experience podcast is heavy,” he wrote. “If you have a smartphone or electric vehicle (that’s 100% of you) then I strongly recommend listening to it.”

Some, if not all, of the famous tech and energy companies in the world are implicated in the humanitarian crisis, Kara said.

“This is the bottom of the supply chain of your iPhone, of your Tesla, of your Samsung,” he asserted.

Fox News’ Thomas Catenacci contributed to this report. 

DRC’s ‘artisanal’ cobalt mines tainted by lack of compliance

By Rédaction Africanews with AFP

In a huge pit in Shabara in south-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, thousands of illegal miners work daily to dig out rocks containing the speckled blue-gold ore, cobalt.

The country holds over 70 per cent of world supply of this key ingredient in rechargeable batteries, electric cars, and mobile phones.

It is estimated that some 200,000 people works as informal diggers in country’s cobalt mines in flagrant violation of its laws.

Artisanal miners breaking the law

The mining at Shabara has been carrying on for years in defiance of the site’s owner, a subsidiary of mining and commodities giant, Glencore.

So-called artisanal miners says they can make equivalent of $200 on a good week, which is a small fortune in a country where most live on under $2 a day.

‘Here, we’re independent, everyone comes, works independently, goes to sell the ore at the trading centre, and makes money. Compared to other mining areas where I’ve worked, here I work in order,’ says Antoine Dela wa Monga.

But the sector’s image is tainted by artisanal mining, with accusations of child labour, dangerous working conditions, and corruption.

‘Normally, when you produce and export, you have to pay a fee. But when it is not declared, nothing can be paid on it. Hence the importance of being able to set up procedures that can guarantee traceability from upstream to downstream, to ensure that these flows become compliant,’ says Tosi Mpanu Mpanu, who is working on the formalisation of artisanal cobalt mining.

Need to clean up the sector’s image

However, government attempts to clear up the illegal mines are at a near standstill.

David Sturmes, director of corporate engagement and strategic partnerships at Fair Cobalt Alliances, says the situation is a lose-lose one for all.

‘Artisanal mining occurs on industrial concessions, so legally speaking, they are infringing on industrial miners territory. This makes it difficult for industrial miners to engage. The mining code doesn’t allow for them to purchase from artisanal miners or allow them on their concessions, but international human rights conventions don’t allow them to kick them off either.’

Under Congolese law, artisanal diggers are only allowed to work in government-designated zones and as part of approved cooperatives. But most diggers say the designated areas are unviable and prefer to work on industrial concessions with identified deposits.

Despite fluctuations in global prices, analysts say the metal’s future is strong given demand from the energy transition.

Sturmes says this means that mining firms and the illegal diggers share a common interest in cleaning up Congolese cobalt’s tainted image.

BY Kat Moon source

In 1579, an African man now known by the name of Yasuke arrived in Japan. Much about him remains a mystery: it’s unconfirmed which country in Africa he hailed from, and there is no verifiable record of his life after 1582. But Yasuke was a real-life Black samurai who served under Oda Nobunaga, one of the most important feudal lords in Japanese history and a unifier of the country. He is also the inspiration for Netflix’s new anime series Yasuke—a project from creator and director LeSean Thomas and the Japanese animation studio MAPPA, executive produced by LaKeith Stanfield, who voices Yasuke, and Flying Lotus, who produced the soundtrack.

This is not the first time that Yasuke has appeared in popular culture. Author Kurusu Yoshio published the children’s book Kuro-suke about the samurai in 1968. Yasuke also showed up as a playable character in the 2017 video game Nioh. And in 2019, before Chadwick Boseman’s death, it was announced that the actor would play Yasuke in a film based on the warrior’s story.The Netflix anime series takes a new approach in telling Yasuke’s story—one that combines historical elements with fantastical components. “Animation is always the medium where you can do things that real people can’t do,” Thomas told TIME. In the show, there are plenty of giant robots, magical beasts and otherworldly fight sequences involving supernatural powers. But there are also scenes inspired by events recorded about the African samurai’s life.

One of the first scenes in the anime shows the first meeting between Nobunaga and Yasuke. After the feudal lord applauds him for winning a fight on the streets, he asks for Yasuke to be cleaned, thinking that his skin is covered in dirt. “Did you ink your skin black?” Nobunaga inquires when Yasuke’s appearance does not change. “I was born with black skin,” Yasuke responds. This interaction is not too unlike the actual initial encounter between the men. “Yasuke was brought before Nobunaga and he didn’t believe Yasuke’s true skin color was black,” said Thomas Lockley, a co-author of African Samurai: The True Story of Yasuke, a Legendary Black Warrior in Feudal Japan along with Geoffrey Girard. Lockley described this event from March of 1581. “[Nobunaga] ordered him scrubbed. Of course Yasuke’s skin remains intact,” he said. Nobunaga then threw a party to welcome the man into his court. According to Lockley, Yasuke entered the feudal lord’s service sometime within the next few days.

The anime series references a range of other moments documented in the life of the Black samurai who lived more than 400 years ago. Interest in Yasuke is bound to grow since, as Lockley says, he is widely regarded as the first-ever foreigner to be given warrior status in Japan. Here is the true story of Yasuke.

Who was Yasuke?

When Yasuke arrived in Japan in 1579, he was with an Italian Jesuit named Alessandro Valignano. They came by way of India, and according to Lockley, Yasuke was in service to Valignano most likely as a bodyguard. “As a priest he wasn’t allowed to have any soldiers or guards,” Lockley said of the Jesuit missionary. “Euphemistically, they had valets—manservants if you’d like—who were also versed in weapons.” In 1581, Valignano headed to what was then the capital city, Kyoto, to meet with Nobunaga and request permission to leave Japan. It was on this trip that Yasuke crossed paths with the feudal lord.

Some have said that Yasuke was a slave, and Lockley acknowledges the theory but disagrees. “Personally I don’t think he was a slave in any sense of the word, I think he was a free actor,” Lockley said. The author speculates that given the circumstances of how the African man arrived at his employment with Valignano, it’s possible that Yasuke was enslaved as a child and taken from Africa to India. There, Lockley said the man could have been a military slave or an indentured soldier, but he “probably got his freedom before meeting Valignano.”

Standing at more than six feet tall and described as having the strength of 10 men, Yasuke left a strong impression on Nobunaga. “It seems like he was a confidant, Nobunaga is recorded as talking often with him,” Lockley said in a follow-up email. “He was also a weapon bearer, and probably served in some kind of bodyguard capacity.”