Graffiti the Ghost

Diamonds Are a War Lord's Best Friend

When I was younger I used to dream of what kind of engagement ring I would wear when I got engaged someday. Since I'm generally not big on jewelry, and jewelry snagging on clothes drives me nuts, I decided I wanted a plain platinum band with a European-set diamond, much like what our dear friend Nastily received from her wonderful beau. Simple and elegant...a fitting symbol for love, right?


But then I started hearing about how dirty the diamond business is, and I started to look at diamonds in a much different light. The diamond business has been controlled by DeBeers, which has a cut-throat monopoly on the business, for over a century. The diamond trade helps fund arms merchants, war lords, and even al Qaeda. Many so-called "blood diamonds" are mined by prisoner-laborers, basically slaves, often children. And this is supposed to symbolize eternal love?


Then I stumbled upon this article in Wired about these new machine-made diamonds, and how they could potentially give DeBeers a serious run for their money, all without forced child labor! And I realized, hey, if this is for real, I could actually get an engagement ring someday without feeling guilty & awkward about it (my only other option up until now seemed to be getting an estate ring, but those are usually too ornate for my simple tastes). The article itself is lengthy, but it's a good read, with all the makings of a good James Bond movie: Belgian gem traders, a retired Army General, secret back-room meetings, Russian scientists, clandestine companies hidden in strip-malls, covert U.S. Navy operations, high-tech semiconductors (hey, it's Wired) and even "Lithuanian amber salesmen, Nigerian tanzanite dealers, and Vegas-style cowboys in ostrich skin boots."

The machine-made diamonds are real diamonds - not cubic zirconium or anything like that. The only real difference is they are more perfect than naturally-occuring diamonds, in that the heat & pressure involved in their creation is carefully controlled throughout the growth process. Oh, and they're cheaper too, especially for supposedly "rare" colored diamonds. (Diamonds are not actually rare - DeBeers just controls the supply very tightly to maintain the illusion of scarcity.)

DeBeers' only defense against this potential man-made diamond revolution is crafty marketing (and murder & bribery, just for kicks), which unfortunately tends to fool about 99.9% of Americans. Their view? "It is not a symbol of eternal love if it is something that was created last week." Oh, but it is a symbol of eternal love if it was created and brought to you through a twisted network of slavery, scamming, and scum-sucking bastards? Okeeey. I have a lot to learn about love.

posted by stefbot @ 5:15 PM