¶ … Blood Diamonds: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World's Most Precious Stones" by Greg Campbell. Specifically it will contain a book review of the book. "Blood Diamonds" inspired the film of the same name and a short documentary that chronicle the diamond trade, primarily in Sierra Leone in West Africa. The violence, bloodshed, and pure greed that populate the diamond mines in Sierra Leone is unbelievable, but this brings it graphically to life.
At the heart of the civil war that cripples Sierra Leone are the diamond mines it contains. The government is ineffectual, and the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) rebels from Libya who entered the country as political rebels but proved they simply wanted to control the diamond mines, are ruthless in their pursuit of wealth. The author notes, "Between these three countries, it's estimated that rebel groups have sold enough diamonds to amount to 4 or 5% of the global output" (Campbell xxiii). The stones extract a heavy toll on the residents of the countries where this violence takes place, which is why they are referred to as "blood diamonds." The book talks about the diamond trade from its beginnings in the diamond mine, through traders, and finally to buying and production in jewelry businesses around the world. He also shows how the diamond's worth has been inflated almost entirely by the De Beers Company, and how diamonds helped fund terrorism, including Al Qaeda.
Campbell's book is an expose of the diamond industry, and it shows that the diamonds that we wear could have extremely violent and bloody origins. He maintains this has been overlooked for decades, and that it is only in the past few years, since his book came out, that people have become aware of it. The book does not hold back on details, and many of them are extremely gory, such as the man who lost his hands for no reason other than the RUF wanted to take over the area where he lived, and he happened to be in the way. The RUF are brutal, and the author does not hold back on just how brutal they...
(Janine Roberts 2006) Acts like the Kimberley process are presumed to guarantee that the diamonds that people buy have not been related to the killing and mutilating of children from a South African country. However, as most critics state, the certification alone is not enough to guarantee such a thing. The process of providing guarantees that the diamonds have not been mined by rebels needs to be much more complex.
101). Plus, diamond mining hires over a million people, Weeks adds. On page 114 Campbell explains that at about the same time -- ironically -- that he was being pitched by the De Beers people about the "huge economic impact that bad publicity about conflict diamonds could have on sales" planes piloted by Al Queda were crashing into the World Trade Center. And also at the same moment as those
Blood Diamonds Greg Campbell: Tracing the Deadly Path of the World's Most Precious Stones. New York: Basic Books, 2004. 251 pp., notes, index. Greg Campbell is a freelance journalist and the editor of the Fort Collins Weekly, whose works have previously appeared in Christian Science Monitor, the San Francisco Chronicle, and a number of other magazines and newspapers. Campbell made several visits to a war-torn African country of Sierra Leone to trace
Angola and Sierra Leone Blood Diamonds Cecil John Rhodes founded De Beers, a diamond mining and trading corporation back in 1888. It is the world's largest diamond cartel and receives all credit for making the engagement ring "an inseparable part of courtship and married life" (Jay Epstein, p.121). De Beer has shown immense success at controlling the price of diamonds. It achieved this goal by limiting the worldwide supply. It has
Diamond Advertising Diamonds may be a girl's best friend, according to a concept popular in the 1950s. Alternatively, diamonds might also be forever, a concept popularized in advertising for several decades. Diamonds are a symbol of love, but they have hardly been the source of much loving interaction between various populations of humans. In fact, diamonds have been at the root of intense and deadly strife in Sierra Leone, most notably,
Diamond Wars in Western Africa Throughout Western Africa, the quest for diamonds has taken control of many of people and affected the stability of economic and governmental status throughout the nation. The diamond mines have caused civil wars, which have resulted in many casualties over the years. Possibly the major cause of the diamond wars is human nature, as it is human nature that sparks the desire to own diamonds. Due to
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