I have difficulty feeling sorry for international corporations. Such organizations are only socially responsible insomuch as it serves their profit interests. Presently, it is more profitable to let African mines be run by “cowboys” than it is to run the mines under any legitimate entity’s auspices.

As for corporate hope, while a number of corporations do a great deal of good in the third world, Union Carbide and their ilk still have a lot of reparation to make.

Chief: As YH said, the actual date cannot be disclosed, and may have been quite a while ago… As it was, we relaxed together during Golden Week (a long holiday in Japan) and plan a Honeymoon for later in the year.

Thomas: that’s the standard view, and why I posted this alternative outlook. The truth is, you’ll never see any improvement in Congo’s conditions under the current management and market conditions. Bring in some outside investment that will demand accountability, safety, and be subject to international scrutiny, and there is potential for change.

Paul: thanks for your comment and the link to (your?) site. You mention a lot, but I respond in part, in brief:

In whose market does most these minerals end in? China’s? No. India’s? No. It is the US followed by the European markets that are mostly driving the looting of and genocide war in the DR Congo for the last forty years.

Certainly the larger the economy, the larger the consumption of resources, hence US/EU mass consumption. But that has been around for decades. It is the boom in places such as India and China, with untapped consumer markets of literally billions, that will drive up commodity prices and affect the marketability of exports from the Congo and elsewhere in Africa—and what is directly impacting the mines in the DRC.

And as for timeline, the Congo Wars were from 1960-65 and 1996-2003, not 40 years. The thirty-year interlude of the Mobutu administration was abysmally corrupt, but relatively peaceful. As that adminsitration was backed by the US for Cold War competition purposes, you could place responsibility in the US for that. But the second Congo Civil War has wholly different causes. If you wish to otherwise show any other level of cause-and-effect relationship, you’ll have to bring up specifics. And instead of commenting here, read by only a few hundred of people, you’d probably do better to contribute to the wiki entry.

If one is the follow the corporate media the war in the neighboring Sudan is much greater in lost of life and robbing of wealth than the DR Congo has very been. The highest claims for lost of life in the in the Sudan including the Darfur region is 400,000, yet in the DR Congo the number is over 4,000,000. Yes, that is ten times that of the Sudan.

While I agree with you about the lack of media coverage between Congo and Sudan, the major difference is that the casualities in th Congo (more accurately estimated at 2,000,000 over the past 10 years) has been a civil war with major civilian casualties. The casualties in Sudan over the past 4 years are certainly lower at 250-400,000, but that is a government supported (or at least condoned) genocide, an act legally requiring action by the international community, as opposed to a war, civil or otherwise, the right to which is incumbent in the sovereignty of all nations (except Japan).

The primary driver of media coverage and content is not corporate agenda but what interests people—the religious aspect of Sudan has millions of Americans very interested.

Final point: there is at present no real multinational corporate presence in the DRC —and surprise, it’s one of the most backward, violent, impoverished countries in the world. That’s no coincidence. Bring in corporations, and you will raise standards across the board.

I’m not sure the lesson to be drawn from all this is the virtues (or evils) of corporations so much as the benefits of a balance of power. Corporations can do good, but usually do so only because some other entity (governments, activist groups) have the ability and desire to hold them to a higher standard. But if those groups- many of which don’t like corporations, period- were to gain too much power, then the ability of corporations to do that good would be diminished along with their ability to do bad. It’s this state of tension that gets things done.

One other comment, on “Bring in corporations, and you will raise standards across the board.”. Sometimes, the standards need to be raised before the corporations will want to be brought in.

“. . .all it takes is one college student on spring break to see some injustice. . .”

That’s what I mean by power. Sometimes it comes in the form of money, or government regulations, or sophisticated organisation, but sometimes it comes in the form of the ability to go to Bangladesh for spring break, or a means of communicating with many other people at once, or a societal disapproval of certain behaviors. And like all powers, it can be used for good or for ill.

To be fair, though, I haven’t read COLLAPSE yet (it’s in my ever-growing stack of books I possess, but haven’t read yet) so we may be talking at cross-purposes here.

“That’s a nice bumper sticker slogan, but it’s not that simple. In Congo, where standards are abysmal and there is no hope for positive change”¦ except, as the article notes, outside investors.”

Actually didn’t intend for it to be a bumper sticker slogan. I was thinking of assorted observations by Dr Barnett and his commentors about the role of Rule of Law in attracting outside investment. If some countries are attractive enough that investors are willing come in and build the institutions they need, then great! But what of those places that aren’t as well endowed? In those cases, foreign companies aren’t the saviors establishing the Law so much as a benefit of someone else establishing it first. I wasn’t trying to dispute your thesis so much as point out its limitations.