Commentary on breakdown of the Kimberley Process:

http://www.jckonline.com/blogs/cutting-remarks/2011/06/29/human-rights-and-kimberley-process?utm_source=JCK+eNewsletters&utm_campaign=3062d47770-2011_06_29_Diamond_Wednesday6_27_2011&utm_medium=email

One has to start somewhere. And granted, while the desired outcome hasn’t occurred, that doesn’t mean that having an ongoing discussion won’t have a positive effect…eventually. Of course when greed and profit are involved, good intentions will be left by the wayside every time. Note the lack of cooperation by China and Russia, two countries notorious for their casual regard for human life. india too has their nose out of joint because they were making profit from cutting contraband stones. Remember how upset they were when Tanzania nationalized their mines, and demanded that tanzanite cutting be done in their country, rather than exporting all their rough to India. India’s shrieking and keening was outrageous and deafening, but wholly out-of-place.

And especially China with their abhorrent record with respect to human rights. From Tiananmen Square, to the ongoing and futile US efforts to coax China into not using toxic materials in their manufacture of children’s jewelry. The Chinese government just doesn’t care. They’re just as unconcerned about killing their own people as killing others’.

Russia is also first and foremost all about Russia. Between the behavior of their government and their crime-boss oligarchs, all pleas fall on deaf ears.

Furthermore both countries function under the premise that anything the West and in particular the US is for they are automatically going to be against. Just because.

Until some kind of way this becomes too (read expensive) painful to China, and Russia, and/or greed ceases to become a motivation, nothing is going to change. Angola , Zimbabwe, Sierra Leone will also continue to abuse their own people, because a) they can and b) its lucrative c) them’s what gots the biggest guns and the most ammunition makes the rules

Beadbear
http://www.beadbear.com