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INTERNATIONAL NGO Global Witness has pulled out of a coalition of organisations working to block the sale of blood diamonds – saying that the process was no longer effective.
Global Witness said it was leaving the Kimberly Process (KP) as its diamond certification scheme had failed in Ivory Coast, Zimbabwe and Venezuela.
Global Witness founding director Charmian Gooch said the scheme had become “increasingly outdated” and that – despite the intensive efforts over many years by a coalition of NGOs – the KP had refused to “evolve and address the clear links between diamonds, violence and tyranny”.
“Nearly nine years after the Kimberley Process was launched, the sad truth is that most consumers still cannot be sure where their diamonds come from, nor whether they are financing armed violence or abusive regimes” said Gooch.
He said that the KP had failed:
Global Witness also said the scheme had become an accomplice to diamond laundering – which sees dirty diamonds mixed in with clean gems.
More than 70 countries have signed the KP agreement in a move to safeguard against the sale of rough diamonds. Currently, stones are only classed as “conflict diamonds” when they are the product of rebel-fuelled conflict – but not if a country’s government is involved in their production, reports the New York Times.
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Richard Boyd Barrett supports central planning, a Soviet style system of economic organization that impoverished countless millions, that is incompatible with democracy and economic prosperity. Why does Mr Barrett think that out of the millions of economists in the world, not even a handful agree with the ‘learned analysis’, of this secondary school left wing English teacher? It irrelevant to Mr Barrett that capitalism and private enterprise has improved the standard of living of the ordinary man more than anything else; its relevant to Mr Barrett that the most capitalistic country in Latin America is the most rich, has the lowest corruption level, has the highest GDP, highest real income per capita, lowest amount living below the poverty line, lowest infant mortality rate, etc its irrelevant to Mr Barrett that Hong kong and Singapore are among the richest countries in the world with higher incomes that Sweden, Germany, France, the Uk etc etc; its irrelevant to Mr Barrett that millions have been taken out of ineffably atrocious poverty in China with the implementation of free-market capitalistic reform, its irrelevant to Mr Barrett that the poor is capitalistic countries are wealthier than the average people in state socialist countries or that obesity is more of a problem among the poor in capitalistic countries than among the rich. Barrett doesn’t care that prices don’t allocate resources in a socialist economy, that they don’t reflect supply and demand, that they don’t reflect scarcity; Barrett doesn’t care that socialism kills incentives to innovate, and for economic growth, kills the right to set up a business, and creates endless waste and dead weight loss, monumental shortfalls in total surplus; in fact he doesn’t care about facts, or the truth, he knows what he likes and doesn’t want to hear anything else; don’t little little things like the evidence or truth get in the way of his endless inarticulate regurgitation of yesterdays fallacies of central planning, soviet nostrums, erroneous assumptions and emotion-laden invective. A backbench ranter with laughable views.
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