Last weekend I managed to watch the film "Blood Diamonds" twice. Once I was watching by myself with the directors commentary on (really interesting insights to the film that way) and the second time I watched it with some friends who hadn't seen it before (I had to stop myself from saying every few minutes..."oh this is how they filmed that scene" "those roads are rubber, and those mountains in the background are CG"). If you haven't seen it it's a film about the Diamond trade and how the illegal diamond trade in Sierra Leone fulled the conflict that has so violently damaged that country and the millions of people there. One of the gruesome practices performed by the militias there would be to cut off people's hands to show their power and keep people in fear. One of the poignant lines spoken by the lead woman, an American journalist trying to uncover the facts and bring this to light, was this:

"People back home wouldn't buy a diamond if they knew it cost someone their hand"

We had a discussion afterwards, where we discussed if that's really true? I feel more so these days that we've just come the accept (myself included) that our products have come at the suffering of those far away from here, but that's just a fact of life and there's nothing we can do about it.

Case in point. The above picture is from the DR Congo, it's of Rwandan militas in the eastern part of the DRC where, as it was with diamonds, militias and armies have been fighting over the trade of the rich mineral resources in the area. We have been told so many times that our cheap electronics, our ipods, and mobile phones can only be made through using these materials. We know that this trade has been fuelling violence leading to the deaths of over 3 million people in the past 10 years. But we have seemed to accept it as the inevitable perhaps "collateral damage" of technological 'progress'.

HERE's a link to the most recent BBC article that alludes to this, along with other complexities involved. It's somewhere in the back pages.

To see some GOOD news happening in the region, check out the work of one of my favourite organisations, Congo Initiative, which some of my friends are involved in helping to run: Congo Initiative