UPDATE: I ran across another article concerning the Kimberley Process. This was a UN proposed method for “weeding” out the so called blood or conflict diamonds. It just shows that when we as humans place so much worth on something, there is another who will find any way to exploit that worth. Here is the article called “Many African diamonds still bloody.“

As I get older, more and more of my associates are getting married, and if you know me by now, I am not all that crazy about traditional culture. I think marriage damages more relationships than extramarital affairs, but that is a whole other story. What I want to address at the moment is what symbolizes this so-called eternal love for each other — the diamond ring. Ahh, you can just see the sparkling goodness right now, can’t you?

How much do they run now? One, two, three thousand dollars? Even more if you REALLY love your wife, right? Well my loving friend, you are forgetting about one small part of that diamond’s history. The possibility that it has a bloody past.

We have all seen the movie Blood Diamond, right? If not, the movie is about how blood (conflict) diamonds, a diamond that is mined by repressive regimes that use the profits to fund wars, genocides and terrorism, get into the main-stream market, sold to US jewelers and placed on your fiancé’s finger. It also covers how the diamond giant De Beers controls the diamond market by locking away the majority of discovered diamonds. This falsely inflates the value of a diamond, propping up the high-priced sales in first-world countries.

In theory, there are controls that the UN mandate on the diamond market. One such method is called the Kimberley Process, but its effectiveness is controversial. Although the governing bodies try their best to manage such a large industry, many countries that allegedly do not have an “official” diamond industry seem to be exporting large amounts of diamonds. There are also those countries that are not officially considered conflict areas, but chaos and human rights violations are rampant. Most blood diamonds just get rerouted and sold cheaper, or certified as conflict-free.

In honor of all that have suffered because of my diamond loving materialists, I thought I would just share photos of the ones who helped bring the diamond to your wife’s finger. I would like to add that these are just photos of those that survived. Unfortunately, many who rebelled against these regimes, or were considered liabilities, had their hands, arms and/or feet chopped off with a machete. This was a sign of the leader’s power though ultimate brutality. You either worked in the mines, starved to death or were hunted down like dogs if considered a liability.

I think it is time we start to redefine what is valued in our lives. No longer can we place the value of a natural resource above the value of a human life, black or white.