I'm going to wear a sandwich board

I finally got around to watching Blood Diamond.  How I waited this long to see it is a mystery.  Many years ago I made a conscious decision to never buy a diamond, yet I never went to see a movie that was anti-diamond.  In fact, I'd been against diamonds for a few years before I'd even heard of the movie (ya i know I'm so forward thinking and cool...no wait i think i jumped on the band wagon when one of my cool progressive friends told me about the diamond debacle...okay I'm not cool just a sad sad follower who envies people who really ARE informed).

Anyway all this is beside the point.  The movie was quite well done and rather enjoyable, but it lacked a real in-depth look at the facts.  I was disappointed to say the least.  I hate to step on toes, knowing how many of my lovely friends and family wear diamonds, and I mean no offense.  It's simply a choice I've made based on facts that I've been given which have created and emotional response in me that were a catalyst to a moral decision.  All that to say I don't judge you based on your bling. 

There are several reasons I don't buy diamonds, including:

1.  Diamonds in and of themselves are worthless.  De Beers has a monopoly, meaning ALL diamonds come from them.  ALL (they buy up the ones that they don't actually mine).  It's the last great cartel on earth.  I don't like cartels, I'm a good capitalist (well socialist, but whatever).  Furthermore, De Beers actually price controls by only selling a fraction of the diamonds they actually have.  Diamonds, as De Beers says, really "are forever."  You can't sell them.  Have you tried?  They have no value except in pawn shops, and there it is at a fraction of their original price.

2.  Open diamond pits are bad for the environment.  The minerals, chemicals, oils, and all the crap that mines make leaches into ground water and poisons it, killing animals and plants, even people, that are down stream from them.  

3.  Diamond mines are often located on indigenous peoples' land.  In Canada, Africa, India, and Australia people have been displaced in order for the diamond supply to continue.  Often at the expense of their culture and health.

4.  I don't like being told I NEED a diamond.  De Beers marketing is ingenious they've convinced the world that you can't be married without a diamond ring.  This is preposterous and totally fabricated in the name of profit.  And I like to be free of such uncool constraints as marketing, which is why I drink sprite and use an apple computer. (Yes that last bit is tongue in cheek, it comes across much better when i say it sarcastically in person). 

There is more, however.  And it gets worse.  I want to tell you what Blood Diamond didn't.  The movie gives a rather incomplete picture of what a conflict diamond is, claiming less than 1% of diamonds are conflict.  Even more Utopian, one can actually buy diamonds that are certified as "non-conflict"  This is simply untrue.  All diamonds are conflict diamonds, the certificate is meaningless. 

 Here's why:

1.  You can't be sure they weren't mined by warlords using children as their personal gun toting body guards.  Diamonds can be laundered and "cleaned" of their dirty past.  

2.  Diamond smuggling is intimately connected to the small arms trade.  Buy diamonds and you are supporting illegal gun sales across the world.  

3.  MOST IMPORTANTLY!  Almost all diamonds (estimates on the conservative side say more than one half), regardless of where they are mined, are sent to India for cleaning, cutting, and polishing.  If a diamond is mined in Canada and is certified non-conflict it still goes to India.  What happens in India you ask?  Slave laborers and bonded children are used to transform a raw diamond into something that can be used in jewelry.  This means that children are sold as virtual slaves to pay off a relatives debt.  This debt, of course, can't be paid off in one lifetime and when the the child is an adult, the debt is passed on to their children or another younger sibling.

THERE IS HOPE!  I want to point out that diamonds are not just decorative they are useful in drills and other uhh stuff (shrugs shoulders at what said stuff is, but knows it's out there and has long technical names).  We are redeemed though.  Diamonds can now be made in labs. And I'm not talking cubic z's.  REAL DIAMONDS that are molecularily identical to mined diamonds.  You can't tell the difference between them.  NO ONE CAN.  okay that's not true and expert can occasionally pick them out simply because the grown diamonds are PERFECT.  Flawless.  No mined diamond in the world is flawless.  So if you really want one, buy a lab diamond.  It's better and cheaper.  

All of this leads me to the conclusion that I cannot, in good conscious, wear a diamond.  Chances are, it's either a true conflict diamond (as in a blood diamond), or at the very least passed through the hands of a slave laborer, poisoned the waters of a village, or displaced a community of people.  Diamonds just aren't as beautiful as the lives of the people they destroy.

Okay.  It's out.  I've said it.  I'm sure I've stepped on toes.  But be assured, I'm no angel.  It's struck me recently that I own a lot of books.  That's a lot of dead trees.  Even more, it's a lot of money i could have spent to solve world hunger.  I mean we have libraries.  I could be renting books for free and saving paper.  But I really like having them on my shelf.  It's a pride thing.  I can say look at me I'm smart.  If I had all the money I've spent on books, I could have fed a village of Africans for life.  So I'll humbly get off my soap box and pull the planks out of my own eye.