2008 Woodie Awards
Real problems with "bloody" diamonds
Walid Zafar
Issue date: 3/30/07 Section: Opinion
There is a lot of fluff in the world. Often times, it's sold to us by miscreant scare tacticians who somehow or other get face time on the Sunday morning talk show circuit and spew their abominable lies.
Another variant of this fluff is pandered by NGO's and sometimes, companies who can benefit by making a problem seem larger than it truly is. Naturally, businesses attempt to deny that problems exist because they have a responsibility to their shareholders who care about nothing except the bottom line. But rare and opportune occasions arise when this bottom line can be increased by overexploiting sociopolitical conflicts elsewhere. Such is the relationship between the diamond industry and their version of Al-Qaeda, "blood diamonds."
Just as governments have used Al-Qaeda as a blank check to do as they please, "conflict diamonds", "blood diamonds" or some other future version, maybe "genocide diamonds" has been hijacked and ultimately profits the global diamond syndicate De Beers Consolidated and its ilk. None of this is new or news.
At one point in history, the British effectively ruled much of Africa and with that, much of its natural resources. The era of decolonization after WWII meant that more and more Natives were allowed to use their own land, something they had long been deprived of.
This didn't sit well with British companies who had a virtual monopoly on the "dark continent" and so British troops were used to stop the burgeoning trade in black market diamonds. Nevertheless, more and more natives, with the help of Lebanese and later, Israeli smugglers and cutters, were able to bypass the British system and undermine the monopoly of De Beers.
In that era of the Cold War, naturally the "Red Commies" were blamed for undermining global stability, although by then, the Soviet Union had already perfected the art of manufacturing synthetic diamonds. Then, as now, the "fair and balanced" reporters of that era ate it all up like succulent steak.
Another variant of this fluff is pandered by NGO's and sometimes, companies who can benefit by making a problem seem larger than it truly is. Naturally, businesses attempt to deny that problems exist because they have a responsibility to their shareholders who care about nothing except the bottom line. But rare and opportune occasions arise when this bottom line can be increased by overexploiting sociopolitical conflicts elsewhere. Such is the relationship between the diamond industry and their version of Al-Qaeda, "blood diamonds."
Just as governments have used Al-Qaeda as a blank check to do as they please, "conflict diamonds", "blood diamonds" or some other future version, maybe "genocide diamonds" has been hijacked and ultimately profits the global diamond syndicate De Beers Consolidated and its ilk. None of this is new or news.
At one point in history, the British effectively ruled much of Africa and with that, much of its natural resources. The era of decolonization after WWII meant that more and more Natives were allowed to use their own land, something they had long been deprived of.
This didn't sit well with British companies who had a virtual monopoly on the "dark continent" and so British troops were used to stop the burgeoning trade in black market diamonds. Nevertheless, more and more natives, with the help of Lebanese and later, Israeli smugglers and cutters, were able to bypass the British system and undermine the monopoly of De Beers.
In that era of the Cold War, naturally the "Red Commies" were blamed for undermining global stability, although by then, the Soviet Union had already perfected the art of manufacturing synthetic diamonds. Then, as now, the "fair and balanced" reporters of that era ate it all up like succulent steak.
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