Ignorance Is Not Bliss – The Truth About the Diamond Industry

March 11th, 2016

Awake Goy

12th March 2016

Contributing Writer for Wake Up World

“For every hand in marriage, another hand is taken away. For every finger to receive a ring, another finger must pull a trigger.”

We all know the story. It is the classic love story. The man gets down on one knee, grabs hold of the girl’s hand and she covers her mouth as she is overtaken by emotions. The man pulls out a tiny box and opens it up to show off the sparkling diamond engagement ring before asking the question, “Will You Marry Me?” They are officially engaged once he pops a diamond ring on her finger.

However, there is another side to this story that never gets covered in the media. It is the dark side of the diamond. And if the public knew about the horrors and atrocities that take place to produce this mineral, perhaps we would re-think the way we celebrate “love”.

The Human Price of Diamonds is Blood

Diamonds are considered a timeless, beautiful, symbol of love. As the popular slogan of the cartels has simply claimed, “A Diamond Is Forever.” They are the world’s most precious gems, and among the most expensive. But the astronomical prices paid to jewelers to possess these beautiful gems is nothing compared to the ultimate price paid by those who mine those diamonds, another world away.

As the love story above tells us, the consumer purchases the diamond and then uses it to surprise the love of his life in a romantic, fairy-tale ending. But, where does the story of the diamond begin?

Similarly, someone reaches out their hand… But this is the outstretched hand of a villager in a remote area in West Africa. He also has all his friends and family nearby as the anxiously wait. However, it is not to put a ring on his finger; instead combatant rebels are about to amputate his hand to ensure the man is not allowed to vote or be involved in politics, as well as spreading fear throughout the village — to ensure the villagers comply with the local rebel militia who operate the diamond mine.

In a different Southern Africa town, a 14-year-old girl knocks on the door of a civilian’s home before pulling out a gun, and a group of rebels raid the home. They steal everything valuable, abduct the woman’s children and executing her in front of their mother.

In Central Africa, another 15-year-old girl has been living in a pit in the ground from which she is brought up each day, only to be raped by a combatant. She becomes pregnant but still endures daily sexual abuse before being dropped back into her hole in the ground, where she lives next to the corpse of her best friend who was killed three weeks prior.

All these stories are true, and they are the direct result of the illicit diamond trade.

The sale of diamonds from these rebel militia groups funds civil wars in a number of African nations, as diamonds are exchanged for weapons. Civil wars have been fought in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. More than four million lost their lives, many more displaced, and hundreds of thousands suffered varying level of war crimes including intentional mutilation/amputation and rape. All of these wars were funded by the same currency – diamonds.

And, as these horrendous acts have been carried out for decades, the West turns a blind eye to the origins of the ‘blood diamonds’ they are flossing on their fingers and showing off to their friends and family.

While blood diamonds initially found their way into the global market in the 1990s, it wasn’t until the mid-2000s that people started becoming aware of the blood that was being shed in the name of producing and supplying diamonds to the west. Since then, the diamond industry — like all industries that exploit cheap slave labor in vulnerable developing nations — initiated a few cover-up operations that create the illusion that their products come from non-conflict areas. However, even “non-conflict” diamonds come from one of the most corrupted industries in the history of the world. This diamond industry has developed one of the greatest marketing schemes in the world, which has us believing that love is synonymous with diamonds, and leaving the world turning its collective head to the crimes against humanity that are routinely carried out — to bring us the gems we believe we need to properly express romantic, marital love.

How many times will a man turn his head and pretend that he just doesn’t see?
The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind. The answer is blowing in the wind.”

~ Bob Dylan

The Diamond Marketing Scheme

Diamonds were first discovered 2,500 years ago and, at the time, were extremely rare. They were only available to royalty, aristocrats, and the wealthy. They were originally found in riverbeds in India and Borneo.

In the early eighteenth century, diamond mines were found in Brazil and as the supply increased the prices dropped.

In 1866, a 15-year-old boy found diamonds on his father’s farm on the banks of the Orange River in South Africa. Within fifteen years, African mines became the leading producer of diamonds and the industry was changed forever.

A mining rush ensued and industrial mining for diamonds had begun.

Cecil Rhodes, an English imperialist, whose thirst for power and quest to spread the British way of life across the globe stumbled upon the diamond mine on the De Beers farm and purchased it for a small price. Rhodes feared that if all these diamonds hit the market, the prices would crash. His goal was to then control the market by securing and regulating the supply. So, one by one, he bought out the other mining companies and founded De Beers Diamond and Mining Company.

By 1888, Rhodes had control of 90-percent of the diamonds in the world, which meant he was able to ensure there would never be a flood of supply to lower prices. He also had been named Prime Minister of Cape Colony, giving him the political power to enforce laws that would pave the way for Apartheid, by removing natives off their land and into forced labor camps to mine his diamonds. In effect, The De Beers Company had created a cartel that was based on the French concept of controlling the copper industry – buying up mines, restricting supply, and raising prices.

(A cartel, by definition, is simply an agreement between competing firms to exclude prices and exclude entry of a new competitor into the market – a practice that, although prevalent, is illegal under both United States and United Nations law.)

De Beers largest competitor, the Anglo American Company, was founded in 1917 by Ernest Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer had stumbled upon massive amounts of alluvial diamonds, which are found on top of the earth and do not need to be mined. Thus, Oppenheimer threatened to flood the market with these diamonds unless he was made chairman of De Beers. And just like that, the illegal anti-trust monopoly was created with complete control of the industry.

Now that supply was under full control, the De Beers company focused on taking charge of the other side of the business equation – demand.

The cartel then set up an office in Hollywood and exchanged valuable diamonds to film producers as payment for including scenes in their films that showed off diamonds, particularly images of men surprising women with diamonds. This direct marketing propaganda helped to launch the notion that equated engagement with receiving diamonds. The cartel also provided them to actresses to flaunt at public appearances, as further means of advertising to the public.

This was followed-up with a marketing campaign with the simple phrase, “a diamond is forever.” This in turn trained the public to believe that love is synonymous with diamonds, which saw people willing to pay large portion of their salaries to show love for their significant other. (DeBeers initially promoted a ‘rule of thumb’ equivalent to 3 months’ salary but scaled it back to 1 month’s salary when sales dropped during the Depression era.)

“The diamond market is dependent for its smooth function on the maintenance of the illusion in the minds of the general public that the diamond is a rare and valuable stone.” ~ De Beers mining engineer, 1930

Furthermore, “A Diamond is Forever” also suggests that diamonds there is no resale value of diamonds — that they are, like love itself, invaluable — and that every woman therefore deserves her own unique diamond to symbolize your eternal love for her, thus preventing diamonds from returning to the market, which again raises prices.

While this sounds like a brilliant marketing scheme; this false concept of diamonds being ‘rare and valuable’ has led to millions of lives being slain and forced into manual labor, while setting up the foundations for Apartheid and the brutal civil wars that occurred over the following century.

The Takeover of Africa

In the late 1880s and 1890s, the European nations got together and literally drew up a new map of Africa. Drawing imaginary lines through the landscape of the continent, they sketched out which European nations would own certain parts of Africa. They were claiming possession of lands they had never seen.

As the colonial powers’ fleets came ashore all the African lands, they soon put the natives to work, plundering all the natural resources including tin, copper, rubber, gold, diamonds, cobalt, ore, oil, etc. By doing so They had recreated a different form of slavery and a rise to Western capitalism. Thus the European Industrial Revolution was born — entirely dependent upon cheap resources from Africa.

All of this was done under the false pretense of bringing Christianity and “civilization” to the natives – eerily similar to the conquest of the Americas a few centuries prior. (See: Celebrating Genocide – Christopher Columbus’ Invasion of America.) And while the European nations flourished off the rich natural resources of Africa, the African continent remained poor and enslaved to western forces.

After World War II the rise of African Nationalism took place and the anti-colonialism movement began. By the 1960s, one by one, the African nations were granted their freedom, due only to the European nations lacking the money to continue to operate as oppressive empires against the anti-colonial movement.

The next obstacle for Africa was the Cold War. Just like the Europeans did previously, the United States and the Soviet Union started dividing up the world into Capitalists vs. Communists territories. Any African nation that supported nationalizing their own natural resources was soon deemed communists, and opposing American-backed rebel groups were created in the name of “freedom.”

Once the Cold War ended in 1989-90, money stopped flowing into these war zones and the rebel groups needed funding. There was still an ample supply of valuable natural resources within Africa, and the brutal civil wars were then funded by illegally selling raw materials to the global market. Hence, the consumers of those materials funded the most brutal civil wars in modern history.

The three countries most ravaged by the illegal diamond trade were Sierra Leone, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. While the rich made enormous profits from exploiting these countries, the citizens still live in some of the least desirable conditions on Earth.