Sunday, November 15, 2009

The price of diamonds


Diamonds have proven, time and time again, to be wonderfully lootable resources when the underdogs are looking for a comeback. From the bushwars in Angola, to the rural villages of Sierra Leone, and more recently it is suspected that Al Qaeda has descovered the quick and easy cash they can provide. Throughout Africa secondary diamonds can be found in fairly accessible places. At the bottoms of rivers, the sandy shores of the ocean, just twenty feet underground. Men risk their lives diving into rivers, breathing CO2 through a compressor hose. Thousands of pounds of dirt or sand is removed so seives can do that more particular work. Water tables are exposed and disrupted. Men, and the boys who aren't quite there yet, have dug at gunpoint, or for outrageously low wages, hardly enough to sustain one man, let alone a family. Agricultural fields have turned to dust, worthless in the homogenous economy.

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