Blood coltan (or not)

Chris Blattman writes:

Blood what? On the heels of the successful (and much needed) blood diamond advocacy, the activist industry has now set its sights on minerals coming out of eastern Congo, including the coltan that fuels your mobile phones. Its sale by unsavoury characters is feared to be fueling war, murder and mass rape.

The problem with the campaign? That pesky little thing called evidence.

Texas in Africa has the full take-down. The moral of the story is don't believe everything 60 Minutes tells you.

Food aid by text message

Speaking of food aid, here’s a great story:

We've reached a very strange point in human history when it is assumed that people who don't have access to food will have working cell phones:

In a test project targeting 1,000 Iraqi refugee families, the United Nations agency will send a 22-dollar (15-euro) voucher every two months by SMS to each family, who will be provided with a special SIM card.

The beneficiary can then exchange the electronic voucher for rice, wheat flour, lentils, chickpeas, oil, canned fish, cheese and eggs at selected shops.

Addressing concerns about mobile phone ownership among the refugee population, WFP spokeswoman Emilia Casella said all the 130,000 Iraqi refugees currently receiving food aid from the agency in Syria have mobile phones.

Update: The Roving Bandit approves.