Ten Reasons Why You Should Never Accept a Diamond Ring from Anyone, Under Any Circumstances, Even If They Really Want to Give You One


1. You've Been Psychologically Conditioned To Want a Diamond
The diamond engagement ring is a 63-year-old invention of N.W.Ayer advertising agency. The De Beers diamond cartel contracted N.W.Ayer to create a demand for what are, essentially, useless hunks of rock.

2. Diamonds are Priced Well Above Their Value
The De Beers cartel has systematically held diamond prices at levels far greater than their abundance would generate under anything even remotely resembling perfect competition. All diamonds not already under its control are bought by the cartel, and then the De Beers cartel carefully managed world diamond supply in order to keep prices steadily high.

3. Diamonds Have No Resale or Investment Value
Any diamond that you buy or receive will indeed be yours forever: De Beers’ advertising deliberately brain-washed women not to sell; the steady price is a tool to prevent speculation in diamonds; and no dealer will buy a diamond from you. You can only sell it at a diamond purchasing center or a pawn shop where you will receive a tiny fraction of its original "value."

4. Diamond Miners are Disproportionately Exposed to HIV/AIDS
Many diamond mining camps enforce all-male, no-family rules. Men contract HIV/AIDS from camp sex-workers, while women married to miners have no access to employment, no income outside of their husbands and no bargaining power for negotiating safe sex, and thus are at extremely high risk of contracting HIV.

5. Open-Pit Diamond Mines Pose Environmental Threats
Diamond mines are open pits where salts, heavy minerals, organisms, oil, and chemicals from mining equipment freely leach into ground-water, endangering people in nearby mining camps and villages, as well as downstream plants and animals.

6. Diamond Mine-Owners Violate Indigenous People's Rights
Diamond mines in Australia, Canada, India and many countries in Africa are situated on lands traditionally associated with indigenous peoples. Many of these communities have been displaced, while others remain, often at great cost to their health, livelihoods and traditional cultures.

7. Slave Laborers Cut and Polish Diamonds
More than one-half of the world's diamonds are processed in India where many of the cutters and polishers are bonded child laborers. Bonded children work to pay off the debts of their relatives, often unsuccessfully. When they reach adulthood their debt is passed on to their younger siblings or to their own children.

8. Conflict Diamonds Fund Civil Wars in Africa
There is no reliable way to insure that your diamond was not mined or stolen by government or rebel military forces in order to finance civil conflict. Conflict diamonds are traded either for guns or for cash to pay and feed soldiers.

9. Diamond Wars are Fought Using Child Warriors
Many diamond producing governments and rebel forces use children as soldiers, laborers in military camps, and sex slaves. Child soldiers are given drugs to overcome their fear and reluctance to participate in atrocities.

10. Small Arms Trade is Intimately Related to Diamond Smuggling
Illicit diamonds inflame the clandestine trade of small arms. There are 500 billion small arms in the world today which are used to kill 500,000 people annually, the vast majority of whom are non-combatants.

Courtesy: http://okrasoup.typepad.com/black_l...iningresources/

For more information can be found at the following sites.
http://www.nodirtygold.org
http://www.mineralpolicy.org
http://anti-slaverysociety.addr.com/diamonds.htm
http://www.ipsnews.net/africa/interna.asp?idnews=16367
http://www.fairtradegems.com

Couldnt agree more.

Diamond fashion annoys and sickens me when you think of the origins of them. Nasty business that.

I knew diamond business was bad, but not this bad!

Any alternative to what rock I should buy the woman that I propose too in the future?

Can I add an eleventh in that some mines are owned (even perecentage wise) by mercs?

".....For example, EO (Executive Outcomes) is involved not only in military-related activities. In Sierra Leone, when the government faced difficulties in paying EO, its sister company Branch Energy, which also belongs to the Strategic Resources Corporation holding, obtained diamond concessions in the Kono region.

EO's boss, Mr Eeben Barlow has stakes in Diamond Works, a company registered on the Vancouver stock exchange which owns concessions in Angola. ....."

"...Despite the corporate-executive image that these groups are at pains to provide, difficult ethical, moral and even pragmatic questions remain unanswered. For example, although Mr Barlow claims that EO only works in coordination with governments, last August, two Canadian papers, the Vancouver Sun and the Toronto Globe and Mail, revealed that an Indian banker, Mr Rakesh Saxena, who owns a bauxite mine in Sierra Leone, paid $70,000 to EO's parent company, Sandline to prepare a counter-coup there. The disclosure of these plans jeopardised the entire operation...."

I just wonder what the boys at EO have evolved into now. They were a shady group when I was in the military. I always thought the Klan was bad but nothing is as evil as a White South African well trained soldier whom EO seemed to have a lot of back in the early nineties.

Holy geez!

What am I meant to do with the "Southern Africa Death Stone" I wear now which I accepted before I knew all of this info? I cannot just throwit away.

@Blackchild why not substitute a different kind of stone for the diamond in the ring. You can substitute it with Opal, Amethyst, Emerald, Topaz, Sapphire or other equally pretty gemstones? You can personalise the ring to make it extra special.

Having said that let's just hope this gemstones are mined in a more humanely manner.

4. Diamond Miners are Disproportionately Exposed to HIV/AIDS
Many diamond mining camps enforce all-male, no-family rules. Men contract HIV/AIDS from camp sex-workers, while women married to miners have no access to employment, no income outside of their husbands and no bargaining power for negotiating safe sex, and thus are at extremely high risk of contracting HIV.

5. Open-Pit Diamond Mines Pose Environmental Threats
Diamond mines are open pits where salts, heavy minerals, organisms, oil, and chemicals from mining equipment freely leach into ground-water, endangering people in nearby mining camps and villages, as well as downstream plants and animals.

6. Diamond Mine-Owners Violate Indigenous People's Rights
Diamond mines in Australia, Canada, India and many countries in Africa are situated on lands traditionally associated with indigenous peoples. Many of these communities have been displaced, while others remain, often at great cost to their health, livelihoods and traditional cultures.

7. Slave Laborers Cut and Polish Diamonds
More than one-half of the world's diamonds are processed in India where many of the cutters and polishers are bonded child laborers. Bonded children work to pay off the debts of their relatives, often unsuccessfully. When they reach adulthood their debt is passed on to their younger siblings or to their own children.

8. Conflict Diamonds Fund Civil Wars in Africa
There is no reliable way to insure that your diamond was not mined or stolen by government or rebel military forces in order to finance civil conflict. Conflict diamonds are traded either for guns or for cash to pay and feed soldiers.













To add on to this - you have a south african witness, me!

Our family was relocated in the late 1990's for the opeing of a new diamond mine and over 800 families and twelve stores had to move and that led to alot of conflict.I wear the daimonds coz my grandfather worked in the mines and died there and i know it might come as an insult but when i know it is a south african diamond i tell myself grandfather worked for this - so did our house keepers husband - they worked in there and i wear what they died for.Same as leaving in a country another man died for.

One the other hand i dont like the situation in D.R.C where young boys skip school to work in mines just to steal and do underground trades with bad business man.It is just bad - money is the root of all evil and diamonds are some wat classed as rock money.Damn this world really turned to chaos

God why give us freedom of choice when yu knew we were going to kill ourselves.

What didI hear somewhere once..

Diamonds a lump of carbon mined by wage slaves in Angola.

I have known about this for as long as i can remember.....I don't wear diamonds or golds, i prefer traditional African Jewelry anyways.....

And what pisses me off even more is those rappers with their bling bling life styles, for the love of god STOP! Its just so embarrassing, most of these workers are YOUR own people, yet......confused3

The Jews must be really laughing at Africans all the way to banks.....sad heh

[size=3]
@ AfrikaMustUnite1

Thank you for posting this thread. This is some serious stuff that our people need to be made aware of. I have heard plenty stories, first hand, about the situation in the D.R.C. and it sickens me, because our brothers and sisters are dying (so what's new) to fill the coffers of fat belly, greedy white men. Sure there are some of our own people getting in on the action (selling out their own) for the 2 pieces of silver they get from the diamond trade, but the fact that lives (AFRICAN LIVES) are considered expendable in the pursuit of diamond wealth sickens me no end.

I can't wait until we have strong, determined no-nonsense leaders in a UNITED AFRICA who will run these cowboys (i.e. Western Big-Business Interest) our of Africa.
It's going to happen.....mark my words!

Respect

Oh Dear



I aint gonna LIE

I have a few diamond pieces..............

..................and I am not going to get rid.......

what i will is not have anymore.............

I'm very glad to see so many responses and people reading this topic. It's a very important topic that so many are totally unaware of, as was I until a couple months ago. What these people are doing to Africans is horrible and will not stop until lots and lots of people speak up, even then it won't stop, until revolution has triumphed.

Make other people aware of this thread and copy and paste it on to other boards, spread word by any means necessary.

If anyone here wants to know how powerful & dangerous ECECUTIVE OUTCOMES are should go this place called KISANGANI in eastern Zaire

and yes the FCO knows about them and ifcat DOD sometimes hires them for recoinaisance operations in that area and media wont tell you