tell me something what do you know about Wanda 2018 and 2022 Blockbuster black panther of a fictional African country wakanda endowed with a rare resource called vibranium and its quest to save it from the outside world this saw how the Black Panther defended wakanda over and over [Applause] again but little did we know that deep in the heart of Africa was a nation blessed with a special resource just like wakanda's vibranium but this country has no black panther no advanced technology or no hid
den cyber Shield this country is Dr Congo when we think of cono what usually comes to mind is the river cono the Roomba of F's music original or the Congo basing rainforest but surely what may not have costed your mind is that Congo just like wakanda is the wealthiest country in the world in terms of mineral resources to put the scale in perspective half of the World supply of this rare mineral is under this nation's soil Congo is so rich that it Supply the uranium that was used to make the firs
t atomic diamonds gold copper tin lithium name it all and the closest thing to vibranium Cobalt found in the largest amount in the Central and Eastern regions of Congo so for a country whose mineral resources are valued at a gross G GDP of $24 trillion the real reason why he does not have those super planes and the military might would absolutely shock you like every Blockbuster movie there is always a conflict a harmonious Nation living in peace a villain trying to destroy it and a hero who alw
ays saves it but this story racks up more than the usual amount of villains if you've watched this far canly hit the like And subscribe button cono has always had it tough as far back as 1480 when he was still known as the Congo Kingdom and was in a slave trade business with the Portuguese not only the Portuguese just suddenly began to abduct everyone it took a protest by King Alonso one of Congo to the Portuguese King ja 3 in 1526 to have this stopped slavery continued as normal and everything
was reasonably fine for another 400 years until 1884 the Berlin convention a conference where 14 European countries came together to haggle over territorial control of Africa and its resources and in the end they divided Africa into 50 different countries but why is this relevant to our story during the burin convention a certain Belgian King Leopold 2 by saying that he was going to end slavery he was given control of Congo but little did everyone in that room know that his man had other plans i
n mind rather than ending slavery liopo did the exact opposite he was able to exert his might and control on the congales people with a false strength of over 19,000 troop known as the false public mostly made up of offers foreigners and a group of cannibalistic MERS from Ivory to oil to rubber plantations the first public Unleashed Untold tyranny on the conges people if a first public off officer is giv 10 bullets he's expected to return with a chopped off hand for every bullet he fires if a wa
lker was rebellious they were to be whipped if a worker collapsed from exhaustion they were to be shot dead and all of this continued until things took an unexpected turn at one of the shipping stations in Liverpool a clerk Edmund miror he noticed from the shipping manifest that while a great number of robber was being shipped in only guns and weapons were being shipped back and he raised an alarm on liop PA's corrupt operation this raised a lot of scrutinies with leopa trying to cover up his tr
acks with bribery and even intimidation however the final nofin was in 1902 when the author Joseph Conrad visited cono and wrote a book on his Hing experience on the black Holocaust that was taking place in the country and with pressure mounting the Belgian government had liopo toed power in 1908 sadly during this time over 10 million conges people had died and Leopold on the other hand had made over $1.1 million and with Leopold out of the picture you would think the exploitation of the congale
s people would come to an end but far from it not long after Leopold's banishment the country's mineral deposits were discovered and it seemed like for the people of Congo everything went back to square one Belgium simply changed the country's name to Belgian Congo and for the next 50 years the people were now forced to work in the mar and in order to portray themselves as the good guy Belgium went on to build elementary schools roads and even churches but underneath all that was a total system
of Oppression milking this country dry until 1960 Africans in most part of the continent began to revolt against Colonial roles and colonizers on the other hand afraid of the uprising began to hand over leadership to the locals resulting in the independence of numerous African nations it was at this time that Belgium put an Abrupt end to his ization of Congo leaving a power vacuum in the Marvel Universe this would have been a perfect time for the five tribes of wakanda to come together and choos
e who their leader would be right but not in Congo even if they did get a black panther figure in the person of Patrice lumumba who set out to restore peace and unite a divided country but this was shortly CU only a few months later internal Mutiny political unrest coupled with the influence of the Belgian government led to prime minister Patrice lumumba ass ination and from 1966 till 2007 the country have seen several military CLS dictatorships and rebel uis however in 2014 in the southern part
of the Democratic Republic of Congo a man was digging a pit for his new toilet when he stumbled on a fascinating Discovery do you remember Cobalt The Rock We compare to vibranium earlier well this man was trying to build a toilet for himself in his rented apartment he had only dug 6 ft in the soil oil when he stumbled on Raw Cobalt in its purest form he kept it to himself and in the next few months he went into the business of Mining and selling Cobalt and making a fortune by the time anyone fo
und out he had totaled the floor in his house and made $1,000 this became known as the Congo Cobalt Rush people began digging their houses their farms and anywhere they could find land in search of cobalt Cobalt is used in making rechargeable batteries that power our phones our laptop and even or electric cars however extended exposure to high amounts of raw Cobalts can be extremely toxic not too long after it was discovered that southern Congo sit on top of 3.4 million metric tons of cobalt Lal
ly half of all the world's Supply not only the hundreds of thousands of congales people move to the southern part of Congo many industrial mines sprung up the lay of mineral riches in a country as poor as Congo provides irresistible Temptation for politicians and other leaders to steal and cheat so the big Tech Giants who run these industrial firms will do their best to cut corners and make the most profit why the people who work in these mines earn Pennies A Day sometimes children who work in t
hese mines are drugged so they can work for longer without feeling hungry today Congo suffers one of the world's largest displacement crisis with over 7 million people displaced in the crisis that have ensued after Amnesty International reported on E I Cobalt mining practices in 2016 Tech Giants Apple said they were committed to safe working environment and would no longer allow under AG label but only a year later Sky News found that Apple was still using Cobalts mined by children in their devi
ces Apple stopped buying handm Cobalt temporarily but started again immediately the news faded the Chinese company who are you involved in une ethical mining she supplies Apple Cobalt to this day and in December 2019 a law firm in Washington DC called International rights advocat sued Apple Google Dell Microsoft and Tesla the lawsuit claim that these companies are involved in the injuries and death of child miners I guess it's safe to say what is happening in Congo today is quite reminiscent of
what wakanda would have looked like without a black panther or is cono an alternate reality version of wakanda whatever the answers might be we can all agree that black panther makes us wonder what if colonization never happened with African countries like Congo be better off or would they have been worse if they were left by themselves without any European interference is there still hope for Congo a world power waiting for the right Heroes to be bured or is this a downward spiral that would on
ly get darker share your thoughts with me in the comment section go
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