The article opens with this sobering paragraph: "Business is booming in the mining zone that supplied uranium for the atomic bombs unleashed on Hiroshima and Nagasaki — despite a decree by Congo's president banning all mining activity here."
"They're digging as fast as they can dig, and everyone is buying it," John Skinner, a mining engineer in the nearby town of Likasi, said of the illegal freelance mining at Shinkolobwe. "The problem is that nobody knows where it's all going. There is no control."
My reaction, profane as it may be?
Holy shit.
Without controls of any sort, radioactive raw materials can go missing; fall into the wrong hands -- hands whose avowed intentions are the destruction of the West and our friends. Think about that.
But no! Don't look behind that curtain, Dorothy. Ignore that man in the kaffiyeh....
(It seems that LGF has the same reaction, only more gently expressed.)
posted by Linda on June 1, 2004 09:23 PM