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He was telling me the electronics used in the batteries for hybrid cars are conflict materials. Remember the blood diamonds in Africa? The same thing is happening in Rowanda now except it's for tin, tungsten and tantalum. But it's not just your hybrids it's also your computer and fancy cell phones and ipods. To sum it up you may have gotten away with not buying their diamonds but your stuck buying the materials if you want to communicate in the 21st century.

Heres a link he sent me, theres oher ones like it:
http://greenlifestylemagazine.net/issue-1/conflict-materials-in-electronics.php

That's why I hold onto an electronic until there's absolutely no saving it. I still play on a ten-year old gaming system, still use the same phone after five years, the same mp3 player after five years... It may not be much, but imagine if I'd bought a new one every year, or even a new phone every few months the way so many people seem to be doing.

the material your talking about, i forget it's name, but in fact there is no of it in Rwanda, they get it from other countries in Africa. There's a lot of fighting in Africa because of it. My Art teacher in high school had the class email there Cell Phone companies asking if they got the materials for there phones from Rwanda.

There's a number of people you can look up that where child soldier's dealing with the Rwandan war lords that where taking this mineral from the other countries. I know that the rap K'naan grew up in the bad part of Africa, i can't remember if he was a child solider, i just remember that my art teacher brought him up when we got on this topic.

Also this mineral can be found in MANY other countries, it's not rare, there's a lot of it in Canada in fact, it's just cheaper to get it from Africa.