Blood Diamonds

It may be beating a dead horse to talk about blood diamonds except people are still buying them, the artifical custom of the diamond engagement ring persists, and the average person does not feel blinded by rage when they see a commercial for diamonds. Also, you may be wondering what sparked this posting. I didn't just see the movie Blood Diamond and have my eyes opened to this tragedy and rush out to tell the ten people who accidentally come to this blog every day. I have been pissed about this injustice since I was a little high school hoodlum but I recently stumbled on my notes from last summer regarding this topic and I stumbled on this article on Fark.

That article recounts an older story regarding how the value of diamonds was artificially inflated and bullshit symbolism was imbued into the diamond. It recounts how a common stone with little intrinsic value was kept from the market in order to artificially create a low supply while some clever advertisers associated the diamond with eternity and love and forced every man in western society from then on to spend two months salary on a worthless crystal of carbon for fear of sending the wrong message to the woman he loves. Fortunately, for their trouble, those advertisers will have to crouch in the desert of sodomites for all eternity. Unfortunately love isn't enough to overcome the demands of consumerism in our culture, or informed women who truly loved their future husbands would insist on not wearing murder on their hands. They would not be able to look at their enggement ring and see the love of their husband but would instead witness blood flowing from the stone on their ring, the blood of the children who died in the mines and the men and women who were murdered when a new militia came and took over the mine.

Remember those anti-drug adds just after 9-11 where the Bush administration and John Ashcroft were trying to capitalize on nationalism in the war on drugs? They implied a connection within the drugs trade wherein money American teenagers spent on pot went into the coffers of the terrorists who had attacked us. The same is true of the diamond trade. If you buy diamonds, you are putting money into Osama Bin Laden's pockets.

What about the Kimberly process you ask? What are you some lobbyist for the diamond industry? For the rest of you, the Kimberly process is the method the diamond industry created to pretend they were doing something about blood diamonds as a public relations scheme. The process is entirely voluntary, completely self-administered with no accountability, and there are large financial disincentives to poor african countries to conform rigorously to the process's own loose guidelines. Given the fact that emeralds and rubies come from conflict ridden regions in Colombia and Burma respectively, and the gem industry turns a blind eye to the suffering inflicted on people in those areas, it is unsuprising that their own method of self monitoring the origins of diamonds is far from robust. This is what it looks like when evil people try to do good but can't stop thinking of their own greed.

Free The West Memphis Three

The Arkansas Supreme Court denied the appeal to reopen the cases of the convicted. The court has refused to hear the newly arisen DNA evidence that indicates the convicted were not at the location commonly believed to be the scene of the crime, and no DNA from the convicted was found on the victims. This leaves open the previously denied federal appeal.

The Walk Of Shame: Gubinatorial Spending

The governors mansion in Texas was burned down, probably due to arson. This morning the Governor declared he would rebuild his mansion regardless of the cost to the people of Texas. It is interisting to me that a government official would vow to spare no expense in rebuilding his own mansion when there is a mortgage crisis going on now and millions of people are finding themselves homeless.

Bush Seeks Coalition Against The Troops

Since the run-up to the war in Iraq anyone who has questioned the Bush administration has had to endure ad hominem attacks on their patriotism and accusations that they don't support the troups. But it has been the Bush administration that has failed to support the troops. If you are like me, when Rumsfeld attempted to justify the lack of adaquate but available armor plating on hum-vees, you were so overcome with rage that you passed out half way through the press conference. The hypocracies and outrages continue even in these late hours of the dark years of the Bush administration as the President has promised to veto an expansion of the GI Bill.

This is particularly significant in relation to war profiteering, the topic an earlier posting on this very blog. The members of the administration who ducked out of military service and their friends and business associates rake in the cash while overcharging the government on essentials for the troops, telling the manufacturers not to include available additional armor, force wounded soldiers to live in decrepid conditions, and deny expansion of the GI bill. When the government is being overcharged here its you and I that are being screwed in the pooper.

These soldiers have taken it on the chin from this administration and continue to step up and volunteer to serve this country. It is a true testiment to the indominable spirit of the United States soldier.

They have your DNA

Here is another reason for innocent people to fear a government with free access to lots of information. They will use it to widen their dragnet and intentionally sweep up people they know are not involved in the crime they are investigating.

California (that pioneer of hairbrained legal shenanigans) has decided to use DNA evidence to round up family members of whoever's DNA they happen to find at the crime scene. I left DNA everywhere I went today. If a crime happens there later, does that mean the cops are going to go harrass my mother at her workplace in the hopes of finding a clue? Or will they simply use this circumstantial evidence as an easy way of pinning the blame on the first most likely suspect they can scrape up, in a horrifying combination of lazy police work and beureaucratic demands to justify an expensive test?

The practical problems I have with this new California program is that they will be spending millions on testing to answer a question that a simple records check could answer. Also, this law will only serve to create more costly criminal litigation as the courts hash out how it dovetails with the new federal law making its way through congress that forbids discrimination based on genetics.

Its a Brave New World

http://www.northwestern.edu/newscenter/stories/2007/10/lane.html

http://www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/28/059.html
In our society being bored or socially aukward is now a mental illness deserving of constant expensive medication. Nevermind that medication has side effects like bleeding from the eyes, at least you wont feel embarassed by your bleeding eyes anymore. All this manipulation of meaning is done by the pharmacuitcal companies that dont want to cure disease anymore, they want to create legal narcotics that we have to buy monthly to boost their profit margins and they discovered that its easier to make an inconvenient part of everyday life, for which there is already a drug, into a mental illness than it is to research a cure for AIDS.

At least in the Brave New World there was promiscuity to look foreward to. The really sad thing is that all the distopian futures written about and feared over the last century and a half are coming true. Not (entirely) through the will of an evil dictatorial government, but because its profitable over the short term to hurt other people and the environment which they inhabit.

This is why capitalism has the capicity to destroy itself, why market forces are not a substitute ofr morality, and why business ethics are not ethical.

Walk of Shame

http://blogs.tampabay.com/schools/2007/12/in-support-of-i.html?cid=939948141

The Plot Gets Thicker

Victoria, BC, the first police department in Canada to include the taser in its "toolkit," is now looking at the justification behind its use of tasers, or at least how the officer who is widely credited with spreading taser use among Canadian police departments came to be on the payroll of Taser International. Apparently, having a very close relationship with a company that includes such factors as having received a token (read:embarrassingly low) amount in stock options for a design for a holster for Taser's M26 model, traveling to the company's headquarters on their dime to become one of their "Master Instructors," and traveling to two different American police departments to conduct training on behalf of Taser constitutes some sort of "conflict of interest." I'm sure that Taser's lawyers are going to have a field day with this one, although one might argue that if they were really good lawyers, they would have advised against this kind of business relationship with a client. Anyways, since there is no conflict of interest procedure or rules for disclosure, Darren Laur will probably continue to have a job, at least for Taser, if not the Victoria PD. I love the way Inspector Bond talks out of both sides of his mouth at the end of the article.

Note, as of publishing, Taser International is down 3.56%.