One prize disturbed me, though. A crown with custom diamond and pearl crown designed by MIKIMOTO valued at $250,000.00. The crown has 800 diamonds, almost 18 karats. If the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach, diamonds are lady's best friend. Right now, I’m still without a best friend. Harharhar!
What are diamonds? Diamonds are small pieces of carbon with no great intrinsic value –and have been the cause of thousands of death, oppression and poverty in Sierra Leone, a West African country. For more than a decade, Sierra Leone was ravaged with civil war highlighted with drug-crazed child soldiers chopping limbs off civilian victims. The center of conflict? DIAMONDS. Diamonds are often traded to finance purchase of arms, drugs and other illegal activities. In Sierra Leone, whoever holds the most diamonds, rules.
Source of Pics: www.un.org
When most of us fought for the rights of panda bear, the whales, dogs, chicken and God-knows-what, thousands of lives are wasted just so we can wear diamonds and feel good about ourselves. When J. Lo was met with so much protest for wearing a fur coat, nobody said a word when Ben Affleck decorated her finger with a million dollar diamond ring. Funny, huh? And for an organization like the Miss Universe who advocates on the eradication of poverty, promotes the rights of women and children and other social and humanitarian missions and causes, what are those diamonds doing in the head of its ambassadress?
Diamonds are classified as legal diamonds, conflict diamonds and illicit diamonds. Buyers are warned to be careful and buy only legal diamonds. But there are always one thousand and one ways to mix conflict and illicit diamonds with the legal ones. Truth be told, there is only one way to stop the trade of blood diamonds, STOP BUYING DIAMONDS.
Diamond is a useless piece of mineral whose only role is to adorn a lady’s finger. We can live without diamond. If the value of diamond is like that of oil, water and food, maybe, it will be easy to understand why bloodshed happened in Sierra Leone. A diamond is forever but a human life is not.
I’m glad I never owned a diamond in my entire life. My resolve not to watch any Miss Universe pageant in the future is a statement of protest and is to take effect immediately. Maybe, Miss Earth is a lot better pageant. I have a very high chance of being crowned – Miss Earthquake!
Peace.
3 comments:
hello! nice blog. makes me think again about diamonds.
DIAMONDS are great...they shine, they glow..glitters our entire body. BUT DIAMONDS brings us near to our grave coz it provokes bad people to do unwanted acts. Rejoice the "fancy things" i have in my jewelry box. bwahahahaha!
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