Growing campaign to boycott Israeli sale of BLOOD DIAMONDS

"Is the $3B a year from the US enough to buy what it needs?"

The hardware and manpower required to sustain the Zionist project in Palestine costs Israel approximately $16 billion p.a. In 2008 the gross value of Israel's diamond exports was $19.4 billion with a NET value of $9.7 billion to the Israeli economy.

Diamonds are Israel's No.1 export commodity. Even though the diamond industry in Israel generates about $1 billion p.a. in funding for the Israeli military (which is guilty of war crimes according to the UN HRC), Israeli diamonds can not be classed as "conflict diamonds" as the Kimberley Process regulations (drawn up by the World Diamond Council which Israel dominates) stipulates that only rough diamonds used by rebels can be called "conflict diamonds".

This sleight of hand allows jewellers to sell diamonds crafted in Israel and claim they are conflict free - a totally false and grossly misleading assertion. Forty percent of the diamonds sold in America are crafted in Israel. Consumers are unwittingly helping to fund a nuclear-armed belligerent regime.

The World Diamond Council is an overarching body set up in 2000 to represent the interests of the different players in the global diamond industry from mining to retail. It was established in response to the growing public concern about the trade in blood diamonds, which posed a serious threat to the diamond brand image that the industry created over may decades at great expense. People were begining to associate diamonds more with blood shed and war crimes than with love and romance...not a good thing if your economy is dependant on diamonds. Once a brand image is damaged is nigh impossible to repair.

Israel is a major player in the global diamond industry with links to every sector along the supply pipe from mines to retail.

Check the WDC website but be mindful of the spin. In the About Us - History section -

"In September 2000, WDC's first formal meeting was held in Tel Aviv, Israel. There, committee members and chairpersons were named, who later would guide the WDC through all areas of activity in the coming years."

"Developing a close relationship with the civil society groups involved in the conflict diamonds issue, the WDC lobbied both governments and the United Nations to create a system that would prevent diamonds from conflict areas from entering the legitimate trade. On December 1, 2001, the UN General Assembly unanimously approved a commitment to a certification scheme that would eliminate conflict diamonds and institute sanctions against transgressors. It was the industry that had provided the blueprint for the certification system."

Note the last sentence in particular . So the vested interests in the diamond industry drafted the system of self-regulation esuring that the high-value end of the industry remained outside the regulations and the UN rubber-stamped it.

Regardless of what war crimes are funded by Israel's cut & polished diamonds they can not be called "conflict diamonds" and are sold as conflict free diamonds worldwide.

The "System of Warranties" introduced by the WDC is completely bogus - those selling the diamonds have merely to include a note saying that to their knowledge the diamonds are not funding conflict - no oversight, no third party checks and balances, an utter scam.

Once again for all you anti-Israel crowd here you keep referring to Palestine like its some country or some nation?i will enlighten you all for the record there is no such thing as Palestine it does not or has not ever existed i have tried and spent hours Reading history i am 100% certain that Palestine was not an Arab nation or a nation in human history.

thank you

referring to Palestine like its some country or some nation?i will enlighten you all for the record there is no such thing as Palestine it does not or has not ever existed i have tried and spent hours Reading history i am 100% certain that Palestine was not an Arab nation or a nation in human history.

And still such a noted israeli as Golda Meir carried and travelled on a Palestinian Passport issued in Palestine as late as 1947.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:British_Mandate_Palestinian_passport.jpg

Dakota Dean, you probably have spent too much time in Dakota. Get out and travel a bit. Visit the refugee camps in the Middle East where 4.5 million Palestinians languish to this day while Zionist interlopers from Europe, America and Russia occupy their homes, farms and land that were ethnically cleansed and stolen in 1947/48. People who have absolutely no connection what so ever to the Middle East (read Shlomo Sand's The Invention of the Jewish People before commenting) and have used the Jewish religion as a political sheild to facilitate the Zionist real estate land grab in Palestine - that place where his Majesty's government so generously decreed could be used to facilitate the creation of a home for the Jewish people in the now infamous Balfour Declaration.

His Majesty’s Government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.

The outrageous irony is that a state that claims to be civilised does promote and practise the trade in BLOOD DIAMONDS.

What argument that rejects the existence of the indigenous Palestinian people who lived in Palestine for generations while it promotes a rogue state that was founded on myth and filled with a collection of migrant Jewish converts from as far as Moldova or Brooklyn.

Good point, Bart. Another amazing and even shocking example of Israeli exceptionalism. (There have been others--e.g., selling organs from captured and wounded Palestinians, but this certainly adds to a very sordid list.)

Bart Gruzalski, please be aware that I am fully cognizant of Pat Robertson's involvement with blood diamonds and gold and was only trying in my fumbling way to introduce his hypocrisy to the site. nothing more. As far as fighting terrorists I would invite you to check into the history of my people, the Tsalagi (Cherokee) to see just what depths the white man is capable of sinking to. If I have offended your sensibilities at all then I humbly apologize to you. nvwadohiyadv (peace) tsula of the Tsalagi

Dear FlNutmegger,

You have not at all offended my sensibilities (or anything else). I just didn't realize you weren't continuing with my somewhat irreverent sarcasms.

I am somewhat familiar with Native American culture, having benefited from being a friend and practitioner under an Arapaho Elder in both sweats and the American Church (which I found strangely Christian at moments) as well as daily life interactions.

I am also aware of the terrible depths of brutality and wanton killing that some early white settlers were happy to participate in. My knowledge is primarily from West Coast brutalities, which are almost unimaginable and as bad as what our troops did to the Vietnamese (though with different equipment). Everyone should become aware of the better known Trail of Tears, though this was not a West Coast phenomenon. A very significant and well documented book on the the "conquest" of the Native Americans is in Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee:

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee is Dee Brown's classic, eloquent, meticulously documented account of the systematic destruction of the American Indian during the second half of the nineteenth century. A national bestseller in hardcover for more than a year after its initial publication, it has sold over four million copies in multiple editions and has been translated into seventeen languages.

Using council records, autobiographies, and firsthand descriptions, Brown allows great chiefs and warriors of the Dakota, Ute, Sioux, Cheyenne, and other tribes to tell us in their own words of the series of battles, massacres, and broken treaties that finally left them and their people demoralized and decimated. A unique and disturbing narrative told with force and clarity, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee changed forever our vision of how the West was won, and lost. It tells a story that should not be forgotten, and so must be retold from time to time.

Dear FlNutmegger,

I wasn't able to add the following because I was having some technical problems with my comment above.

First, I want to say that the treachery of the American forces against the Native Americans wasn't the biggest highlight of Bury my Heart at Wounded Knee. What really stands out in my memory, even today, is the amazing equanimity and poise of dieing Native leaders who are trying to negotiate a safe passage for the women and children in their tribes. I am still in awe of their courage, compassion, and concern for their own people. (I would appreciate your comments on my emphasis in my own memory of this theme.)

Second, the book which tells about some of the West Coast atrocities of which I am familiar is Genocide in northwestern California: When our worlds cried [Paperback]
Jack Norton (Author)

This book, obviously, is very hard to get but it tells the horrific stories that often begin with a misunderstanding of between people of different cultures.

I am a bit slow where the intricacies of sarcasm are concerned. There are a number of The First People, as members of the Vine, and if you are sincere in your quest for knowledge I would recommend most all of them with the exception of me. I was born on the rez but taken off with all of my family, by my grandfather, when he somehow got wind of the fact that the church was about to take all of the children of the family and enter us into their church run school there and from which none returned. He gathered us all up and ran. I spent all of my growing years on the East Coast and now that I am old, 87, a particular friend, Kavika, here has reintroduced me to my heritage. And I shall call you friend since I accept your kind offer.

misunderstanding of between people of different cultures.

If I may please. There has been no misunderstandoing between the White Man and the First People. What they tried to accomplish was the first recorded instance of genocide of an entire race of people and it failed! The Spanish tried it in Mexico,and Central & South America and it failed there, too.

Dear FlNutmegger,

In looking up a site here I found:

'Cherokee' is Creek for 'people with another language'. (It's amazing how white settlers always managed to learn another tribe's name for any group of Indians. They learned the Creek word for the Cherokee tribe, but not the Creek word for themselves.) Anyway, our original name for ourselves was Aniyunwiya, but Cherokee is fine too (though we say it Tsalagi). There are 350,000 Cherokee people today, mostly in Oklahoma and North Carolina.

The culturalcentrism of the white settlers and the anthropologists is always amazing to me. In the above quote the following stands out (with its inherent humor):

'Cherokee' is Creek for 'people with another language'. (It's amazing how white settlers always managed to learn another tribe's name for any group of Indians. They learned the Creek word for the Cherokee tribe, but not the Creek word for themselves [which I suspect would also have been "Creek"--people with another language.])

When I was living in California, the main tribes in my area were rather small by your standards but they too had names the anthropologists gave them not knowing any better. When the anthropologists asked one group of people who they were, they told the anthropologists that they were "people." In their language the word for people is "Pomo," and so they became known as the Pomo. More stupidity by the anthropologists who themselves were also pomo. This account, for which I have unpublished evidence, is made complicated in Wikipedia:

The name Pomo derives from a conflation of the Pomo words [pʰoːmoː] and [pʰoʔmaʔ].^[1] It originally meant "those who live at red earth hole" and was once the name of a village in southern Potter Valley near the present-day community of Pomo.^[2] It may have referred to local deposits of the red mineral magnesite, used for red beads, or to the reddish earth and clay such as hematite mined in the area.^[3] In the Northern Pomo dialect, -pomo or -poma was used as a suffix after the names of places, to mean a subgroup of people of the place.^[4] By the year 1877 (possibly beginning with Powers), the use of Pomo had been extended in English to mean the entire stock of people known today as the Pomo.[3

Please notice that the following sentence from this quote is consistent with what I've heard and mentioned above, i.e., that Pomo means people. The key sentence: In the Northern Pomo dialect, -pomo or -poma was used as a suffix after the names of places, to mean a subgroup of people of the place [or the people of the place].

From the site above about the Cherokee I realized that it was your ancestors who bore the burden of the trail of tears:

The best-known episode in Cherokee history was also the worst: the Trail of Tears, the forced relocation of the Cherokee Indians from their ancestral home in the southeast to Oklahoma. The Cherokee people were an urban, Christian, agricultural, intermarried society who had supported the United States against other tribes. In the end this was all for nothing. Though prominent Americans like Davy Crockett and Daniel Webster spoke against Removal, and though the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional, President Andrew Jackson sent in the army. Fifteen to twenty thousand Cherokee Indians (along with Choctaw, Creek, and other tribes) were rounded up and herded to Oklahoma in the winter of 1838-1839. Driven from their homes without being allowed to collect their possessions first, even their shoes, the Cherokees were no better equipped for an 800-mile forced march than people today would be. Between four and eight thousand Cherokee people died of exposure, starvation, disease, and exhaustion along the Trail of Tears. If you understand this, both the extent to which the Cherokees had adopted American standards of civilization before the Removal and the ultimate futility of it, you will go a long way towards understanding the Cherokee mentality and also the attitudes of other Indian peoples towards us.

I would like to be absolutely sure I understand the last sentence of the above. I think I do, and of course it is very sad, but can say this last sentence in a different way? In partiular I am interested in the last part: "understanding the Cherokee mentality and also the attitudes of other Indian peoples towards us."

Where the attitudes of other Indian peoples hateful? Unsupportive? Sympathetic?

Thanks in advance, your friend, Bart

We in america are sick of arab oil and why we have to pay for the sheiks to live in palaces while we struggle!!

Enough of islam not only do we get attacked by islam but we have to pay through our noses so the arabs can live large!!

hallbi, I like your "motto": Life is short and precious. Save lives and help others in need. Donate what you do not need to help others.

I'm assuming, therefore, that you are kidding about checking out diamonds. Instead give your beloved a goat that, via Oxfam or some other organization, that will be cared for by a family in a needy country.

There once were excellent manmade grown diamonds. Maybe they are no longer on the market (I could imagine the diamond industry buying the technology). There were so good that even an expert had a hard time telling them apart from the diamonds dug out of the earth. You might want to check if we can still buy them--they were roughly 10% of the cost of a similar "real" diamond.

truthlover

De Bears and israeli interests bought the rights to that technology, today only industrial diamonds are "man made".

http://tinyurl.com/7pjezfw

curtonthebeach, thanks for informing us. I'm not surprised. I recall reading about them and thinking of purchasing some. I also suspect that some "real" diamonds are in fact manmade since very few people have the expertise to tell them apart. (I think this was a worry when the technology was not owned by the diamond industry.)

Do you have any further thoughts about when this happened and whether we can tell them apart?

The DiamondView tester from De Beers uses UV fluorescence to detect trace impurities of nitrogen, nickel or other metals in HPHT or CVD diamonds.

Apparently man-made diamonds contain a lot more impurity's than real diamonds, but according to the Wiki article special equipment is needed to find them.

Dakota Dean, let's look at your comment, shall we?

You wrote:

[1] We in america are sick of arab oil and why we have to pay for the sheiks to live in palaces while we struggle!!

[2] Enough of islam not only do we get attacked by islam but we have to pay through our noses so the arabs can live large!!

[The numbers are mine so I can discuss these two statements below.]

Let's look at [1]. You are conflating and confusing all sorts of issues here. Let me just provide a short list:

A. US oil that can be pumped out of the ground for less than $2 a barrel--and there's a lot of it--is nonetheless sold at the market price which currently is around $100 a barrel. Is it okay for the CEOs of EXXON and other US companies to make millions of dollars by selling to the underemployed US worker oil that costs them only $2 a barrel?

B. The plan for the Iraq war was to gain control of Iraqi oil. That would not have made oil or gas any cheaper for the US worker. Once again, the CEOs of Exxon,ConocoPhillips, and others would just have reaped higher salaries and bigger bonuses.

C. It's fairly clear to most observers that the price of oil is largely a product of speculation and manipulation of markets. Are you in favor of these practices ending. Have you, by the way, seen the Academy Award Winning documentary "Inside Job"? If you are concerned about people ripping each other off and taking advantage of working class Americans, this is a MUST see. Here's the trailer. Takes less than 2 minutes and 30 seconds. Perhaps you can take the time.

D. Our economy is much too much based on fossil fuels--not only oil but also coal. Yet the Bush II administration cut back on support for less fuel-intensive cars. Europe and China are at the forefront of exploring green alternatives: windmills, solar cells, ways of extracting the energy from tides, and much more. I'm assuming you are in favor of all of these explorations and only regret that the US is not doing more. Or do I somehow mistead you?

There's more but that's enough about [1]. Let's turn to your [2]:

Enough of islam not only do we get attacked by islam but we have to pay through our noses so the arabs can live large!!

This would be funny except that you obviously think it's worth writing. Have you read any of the books by Michael Scheuer?

Michael Scheuer is a twenty-plus-year CIA veteran. From 1996 to 1999, he served as the Chief of the bin Laden unit (aka Alec Station), the Osama bin Laden tracking unit at the Counterterrorism Center. He then worked as Special Adviser to the Chief of the bin Laden unit from September 2001 to November 2004. He resigned from the CIA in 2004. He is currently an Adjunct Professor of Security Studies at Georgetown University and a Senior Fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, writing regularly for its online publication Global Terrorism Analysis. He lives in Virginia with his wife and two children.

Or, just to clarify some of the motivations of suicide bombers, have you read "Dying to Win" by Robert Pape? Here's a longish review that devastates your assumptions about Islam. For the sake of readability, I will put it in the next comment. Thanks for your understanding.

the Jews the indigenous people from Israel?

They are not the indigenous inhabitants, the Holy scripture describes how the Jews conquered the land from the Canaanites.

http://tinyurl.com/7zgw9zu

Dakota, since you have shifted arguments let me drop back, point out what our initial discussion was about, and then address briefly your last response.

Your first comment:

growing movement?

5 LADIES WITH A SIGN.

I CANT STOP LAUGHING!!

Then your second comment:

Once again for all you anti-Israel crowd here you keep referring to Palestine like its some country or some nation?i will enlighten you all for the record there is no such thing as Palestine it does not or has not ever existed i have tried and spent hours Reading history i am 100% certain that Palestine was not an Arab nation or a nation in human history.

thank you

And finally your third, the one which I was actually answering:

We in america are sick of arab oil and why we have to pay for the sheiks to live in palaces while we struggle!!

Enough of islam not only do we get attacked by islam but we have to pay through our noses so the arabs can live large!!

It looks like from your comment you accept that I've answered whatever you intended in the third comment. Next you suddenly change the topic with your most recent argument:

basically what you are saying is if i feel someone is on my land i can use terrorism to remove them? even if my claim to that land is one big fraud like the Arab Palestinians and their quest to remove the Jews the indigenous people from Israel?

This is a very strange comment to a short video explaining terrorism against the United States. I am certainly NOT saying what you are saying in your first sentence above. You seem not to know what the word "terrorism" means why your example is silly.

The second sentence raises yet another point that is worthy of resolution, though not on this thread. . My shortest response is that the video had NOTHING TO DO with the state terrorism against the Palestinias. And that response is also my response as moderator.

bubbling, thanks for the comment. I read my first (and only) book on blood diamonds also abot 10 years ago. That's largely the focus of this seed. If Israel IS selling blood diamonds, then they to need to be boycotted. Seveal of the comments above do a wonderful job of telling how Israel seems to be in control of what counts as blood diamonds. THAT is the subect of the article. From what I've read above, I would guss the Israelis are involved in disguising their role in purchasing and selling blood diamonds.