Joe Rogan, Siddharth Kara: Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives.

Ok, so this isn’t my usual fare (and hello … I have been absent, it happens, I’m a very busy man all of a sudden). Below is an economist Editorial piece on Cobalt mining in the Congo. Hold that thought.

I have just screen-grabbed the words and pictures from my Inbox. Important things to note. I keep the economist news round-up coming into my inbox just to give me a flavour of what the establishment press is about. Personally, I think the economist … based on the content that is delivered to me in newsletters, is somewhat disingenuous. There is a whiff of highbrow `Woke’ to it that suggests the underlying plucking of the strings of discord in the west, by parties with a keen interest in undoing social cohesion in the west.

We have all heard about the various influence scandals in recent times, by both Russian State operatives and their alleged troll farms (though the Donald Trump collusion thing looks like a total fabrication) … one has to tread carefully here, there are a lot of rabbit holes to fall down. So, we will stick to the point, difficult as it may be in a short article. However, and likewise, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has also been trying very hard to influence the west with a mix of cyber attacks and influence campaigns. These are well documented across a broad spectrum of intelligence services, written and broadcast media, never mind the issues alleged around Tik Tok and it as a tool for the CCP to extract the best information on the social fault lines in the west and then to amplify the differences by amping inflammatory discourse. We will pin this effect at the base level of society where the CCP can exert the most practical but highly dispersed influence amongst the broadest cohort of people in the west `The general public’(the foundational level stuff). The stuff that messes with government and institution's operations just by being a constant distracting presence. Issues that are created and then amplified further up societal hierarchies as a response to the malign `pot stirring’ at the foundational level of society. See rabbit holes.

This brings us to the newsletter, and Joe Rogan’s recent podcast on Spotify (Shorts available on YouTube), featuring Siddharth Kara, and his investigation into Artisanal Cobal mining operations in the Congo.

 

I am not going to describe the podcast, watch it on Spotify, or watch some of the clips that have been reamed out by Youtube influencers and reposted. I will get to the gist of matters. And then I am going to ask you to ask yourself a question about the integrity of the Economist.

 The Joe Rogan Experience on Spotify

Siddharth Kara, has described the conditions in Artisanal Cobalt mines as appalling. These mines are populated by not much more than slave labour, and probably a contingent of actual slave labour bought and trafficked from Libyan slave markets (apparently you can view these on some internet platforms). The workers are not protected from the mineral they are mining, and Cobalt is a systemic poison like Lead.  

Cobalt poisoning Wikipedia article.

Siddartha Kara is an author and expert on modern-day slavery, Human trafficking, and child labour. Look for his new book, “Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives,” Available now

https://carrcenter.hks.harvard.edu/people/siddharth-kara

Amazon: Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives.

So here is what peaked my ire. “It will come as a relief to carmakers, which feared that shortages could cut short the EV boom, and as a disappointment to legions of artisanal miners in Congo, where a blue-gold rush is still under way.

Link to the Economist article (there is a paywall or subscription sign up)

Economist.com finance and economics 16/02/2023 cobalt a crucial battery material is suddenly superabundant 

“a disappointment to legions of artisanal miners in Congo.” How dare the Economist journalist categorise these developments as a disappointment to the workers in the Congo?

If you watch the Joe Rogan episode you will discover that there should be NO artisanal miners extracting Cobalt. The supply chains are supposed to be clean end to end.  You will discover that Cobalt is in modern luxury electronics, cars etc. You will likely know that 99.9999999999999999% recurring of the companies that make products that use Cobalt will tout their anti-Slavery, Child Labour and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) credentials in their attempts to persuade you that you can trust them, love them and bring them into your life and home, because that’s good business.

So, now imagine a journalist who at great risk to himself goes to the Congo and sees the appalling scenes played out in real-time as fifteen thousand Artisanal miners toil in heat and Cobalt dust to bring us (EV’s (electric vehicles), mobile phones, Laptops, tablets etc). Scenes which we in the west would be rightly appalled by if we saw those conditions for ourselves. 

How best to frame that in the wider media? How best to re-frame the problem? Easy: suggest that the Artisanal workers are like plucky frontiersmen of the California and Yukon gold rushes of yore, who don’t deserve your sympathy because the forces of capitalism are about to strip them of their monopoly of the supply of Cobalt.

When I first saw this article and having watched the Joe Rogan podcast a couple of weeks before, I was not stunned, but I was incredulous and confused. I felt like a seedling conspiracy theorist jumping to all sorts of ridiculous conclusions. The problem with the article is its timing. Joe Rogan and Siddharth Kara, release the podcast, Siddharth Kara’s book goes to print, and the Economist waits a week or so and publishes a sugar-coated piece about Artisanal miners, being undercut by commerce. A complete re-frame of Cobalt mining, and likely to an audience that may not view Joe Rogan's podcast, because the mainstream media has framed Joe Rogan as a fringe element who talks to other fringe elements about fringe ideas, up to and including hokum and bunkum. And therefore shouldn’t be taken seriously.

Where does the CCP fit into this? They are the primary importers of Cobalt for refining, They own pretty much all the Cobalt mining in Africa. The CCP, has exerted editorial influence on the Economist in the past. The CCP runs influence campaigns in the west.

Epoch times on Chinese Influence Campaigns. 

 The Economist Newsletter text and image 

A big obstacle to the energy transition is zooming into view: the finite supply of the niche metals needed to make the cables, turbines and other bits of kit that power a greener economy. That roadblock loomed larger in the past year as the shortage of fossil fuels caused by Russia’s war prompted energy producers to speed up installation of solar and wind infrastructure. But one vital raw material is not in short supply. Cobalt, a metal used to make batteries that was once known as “blue gold”, has become superabundant. Here are the surprising reasons for this “cornucobalt”. It will come as a relief to carmakers, which feared that shortages could cut short the EV boom, and as a disappointment to legions of artisanal miners in Congo, where a blue-gold rush is still under way. Fortunately for miners elsewhere, many other metals remain rare—making it ever more likely that the green transition will create new commodity superpowers.

 

Matthieu Favas Finance correspondent (The editorials correspondent).

To close. I am not a journalist, my investigation has been limited because I am not trained in the dark arts of journalism. What I have done is apply Occam's Razor. I may be wrong, but I am going to express my opinion that the Economist article, while it may present a new front for the mining of Cobalt in the longer term, is utterly inhumane regarding the plight of miners currently working in the Congo. And the Economist has sanitised the problem with an egregious re-framing. Do you agree? And can you trust the Economist?

Addendum: The word Artisanal sounds artisan, it has a certain kudos, and this is deliberate. However, in the context of Cobalt mining, it relates to mining in shorts and flip-flops, and has nothing to do with art or the application of craft. It is the clever use of a word to elevate workers above slavery. Words are weapons.