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Hip Hop Forums => General Discussion => Topic started by: RearrangedReality on December 13, 2006, 09:40:41 AM
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By DaveyD
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=15116190&blogID=204353421&MyToken=17d447a0-8e90-4727-95cb-ddc27dd3d28d
Interesting read.
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Maybe thats' why Nas didn't sign to Def Jam when Russell was still in cntrol coz he totally disagrees with Russells Stance on the issue.
Nas is on the soundtrack for Blood Diamonds and this is what he had to say at the premiere of teh movie last friday:
NAS, RAPPER/ HIP- HOP ARTIST WHO SANG SONG ON
SOUNDTRACK AGAINST RAPPERS WEARING BLOOD DIAMONDS AND 'BLING BLING' CULTURE,
SAYING:
"All of us in the rap game that come from communities that I come
from this is our thing. We wear jewellery its out natural thing to wear
jewellery you know. A lot of us don't know why the story is not told and
behind the jewellery. We want to know, we want to figure this out, this the
perfect time this movie is the perfect thing to get that message out."
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There's a wonderful awakening happening in hollywood. maybe its just a fad but I think there are actors and producers who give a phuck about whats' happening in the world and realise how easy it is to use mainsteam media to put a spolight on these issues and are actually doing it.
It also matters what angles they tackle these issues from of course and Obviously its far from solving a lot of the issues that plague our planet, our people, us, but its a start and anything that will make people not directly affected by these issues give a f*** and do something is enough. Just to trigger empathy and to get peeps to start caring, to start asking questions, to start thinking differently.
watch out for Blood Diamond, it drops in February I think. Also check out a movie starring Lucy Liu and our own Ian Roberts in a movie about AIDS in diff parts of teh continent its called 3 Needles, another movie with Forrest Withaker (sp) called Last King of Scotland.
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Interesting read.
Good move by the de Beers big wigs to invite Russell over.
But honestly I think his "fact-finding" mission was highly biased. I take it de Beers execs took Russell around showing him their flagship plants & processes then after that took him to Moloko (true story) to party with the "locals". Hardly seems comprehensive to me.
If the movie is about Sierra Leonne/ Angola diamond trade then why didn't he go there?
All due respect but I do not think Africans (white or black) have as big a stake in de Beers balance sheet as implied by the statement about diamonds benefiting Africans directly.
Tis all window dressing. Poverty still reigns in SA and 30% of the population still owns 90% of the wealth.
Sierra Leonne is still siffering the aftermath of the civil war & best believe blood diamonds are still being mined in Sierra Leonne & Angola.
Its a shame that the world had to wait until a popular movie came out about the issue to start debating & giving a damn. F*ck the media for wasting the minds of the world with nonsensical bullsh*t like reality TV.
Russell's statement is great for the diamond business but does NOTHING for the average African on the land which the diamonds come from.
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Last King of Scotland.
this is the funniest book i've ever read. idi amin referred to himself as:
"His Excellency President for Life, Field Marshal Al Hadji Doctor Idi Amin, VC, DSO, MC, Lord of All the Beasts of the Earth and Fishes of the Sea, and Conqueror of the British Empire in Africa in General and Uganda in Particular. the Last King of Scotland"
can't wait for the movie to drop... forest whitaker's getting an oscar for this one! :wink: [/b]
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watch out for Blood Diamond, it drops in February I think. Also check out a movie starring Lucy Liu and our own Ian Roberts in a movie about AIDS in diff parts of teh continent its called 3 Needles, another movie with Forrest Withaker (sp) called Last King of Scotland.
just to get the facts right:
Blood Diamond is set to release in SA on 19 january
and 3 Needles is about peeps experience with AIDS in diff parts of the world including Africa.
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It disappoints me when I see the quality of threads that are hits on AG.
Whenever intelligent important stuff like this topic comes up the thread will get like 4 posts from the regular contributors & inevitably tank within a day.
But as soon as a thread about "First Orgasms" or "Brick's prono Supply" comes up they are instant hits. Like 4 pages of posts in 6hrs! :evil:
Why do people refuse to talk about REAL issues in life.
This is a hip hop site first right?
The whole appeal of hip hop to me was that it tackled REAL issues head on.
Maybe this site is just a reflection of what hip hop has become.
*sigh*
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jesus, tate, quit crying...ok, here goes.
i think what is left to do is get consensus and awareness in civil society (normal folk diamond consumers) about the matter. the corporate sector and goverments have done their bit to combat the sale and procurement of conflict diamonds by way of the Kimberley process- spearheaded by South africa and De beers- if not anglo.
I think its one of the international community's success areas the conflict diamond issue. especially if viewed within the prism of the failures of and in collective action/ diplomacy of late. not to say our work is done though...not by a long shot.
happy, Tate?
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It disappoints me when I see the quality of threads that are hits on AG.
Whenever intelligent important stuff like this topic comes up the thread will get like 4 posts from the regular contributors & inevitably tank within a day.
But as soon as a thread about "First Orgasms" or "Brick's prono Supply" comes up they are instant hits. Like 4 pages of posts in 6hrs! :evil:
Why do people refuse to talk about REAL issues in life.
This is a hip hop site first right?
The whole appeal of hip hop to me was that it tackled REAL issues head on.
Maybe this site is just a reflection of what hip hop has become.
*sigh*
the latter Which you regularly visit I might add :oops: :oops:
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Great thread..
Russell has always struck me as fake a** mini jesse jackson.
If he wishes to see if the effects potrayed in blood diamonds are exaggerated shouldn't he have gone to Sierra Leone. As usual he is hoping to reach out the ignorant in the american public...
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jesus, tate, quit crying...happy, Tate?
It aint about me..
Its bigger than hip hop.
Thanks for contributing though.
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I would expect Russell Simmons to say some shit like that. It seems that
if he goes to South Africa (and another English speaking African country like Botswana), case closed. WRONG! He could also visit Angola or better yet, the DR Congo, where blood diamonds still continue. I know that the DRC is risky but so what, his preppy a$$ needs to be scared!!!!
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This is just another case of the triumph of marketing over reality... human beings a**sociate diamonds with beauty, we see them as the delicate gifts of a benevolent earth and f***it we like shiny things.
You try being a guy in a serious relationship and getting away with proposing without a rock, it don't matter who she is she is on the sliding scale from severely disappointed to f***in incensed. Diamonds have no intrinsic value beyond a few industrial applications, their values as treasures are completely created, but we always buy into "constructs " with much greater enthusiasm than anything else.
And why was anybody surprised that Russel Simmons isn't an altruistic saint, he's been the epitome of big business for the last decade, he's just the black face of corporate success. Why are we kidding ourselves into believing that his skin tone automatically imbues him with a greater concern for a world far removed from his bottom line.
The history of the diamond trade is an ugly one drenched in blood and built on a foundation of the corpses of poor people, black and otherwise, BUT that is the history of ALL industry. Realise that "exploitation" is a not a dirty word in business, its meaning can be resoundingly positive.
There are no easy answers and romanticism about the effect of a positive message is about as naive as you can get.
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^^^^^^. I second that.
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Humans :? :? still cant get it! nc nc nc
i think they should be a movie about "Blood Fur"8O
All them fur jackets u see.
My contribution is swift
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i think ppl like russel should stop tryin to get attention from we know the nigga dont feel shit for us but just tryin to get us to rally behind him so he can bring record company slavery to africa
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:roll:
in respect to diamonds / minerals - international interest:
Simmons visit means nothing to me.
What is more interesting ( in context of minerals) is that the Khoisan have won their legal battle against Botswana.
see here:
http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=293333&area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__africa/
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I believe this belongs here:
http://www.ballerstatus.net/editorials/read/id/45179089/
This is a very badly written letter indeed. There is very little substance to it & more political spin-doctorng than anything else.
e.g. look at this sentence:
"It is unfortunate that old stereotypical images of an underdeveloped, self-destructive, savage Africa have been re-conjured up in the mindset of too many people by those who may be well intentioned but who, through their unmitigated zeal to make and market movies, documentaries, and other forms of media, inadvertently display a hurtful, counterproductive, irresponsible and less than accurate portrayal of the current reality of Africa."
It reads like political rhetoric. Not only is it ridiculously long & padded with uneccessarily complicated grammar but they really 'aint saying s*it'!
I mean it doesn't take just a movie to reinforce images of a starving Africa just turn on the news.
PLEASE Mr Simmonds "we don't believe you we need more people!"
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Joe Queenan
Friday January 5, 2007
Guardian UK
Eighteen years ago, Edward Zwick made the very well-thought-of film Glory, in which a ragtag group of feisty young black men are whipped into shape by a white guy played by the actor who brought Ferris Bueller to life - with help from the white guy who once played the Princess Bride's boyfriend, the Princess Groom. Last year, James Gartner made a very well-thought-of film called Glory Road, in which a ragtag group of feisty young black men are whipped into shape by a white guy played by an actor most famous for helping his fellow shipwreckees escape from the capsized ocean liner in Poseidon.
Now Zwick himself is back with a film in which a feisty but hapless black guy is whipped into shape by a white guy played by an actor who first achieved fame by playing a mentally handicapped boy in What's Eating Gilbert Grape? If there is anything black people the world over have learned from Hollywood - and there isn't a whole lot - it's that no matter how bleak the situation seems, they can always rely on some resourceful, charismatic and, in some instances, shapely white person to bail them out.
The Zwick film in question is the exciting but characteristically idiotic Blood Diamond, in which Leonardo DiCaprio plays a ruthless Rhodesian smuggler who specialises in spiriting precious stones out of war-torn nations whose diamonds the G8 nations have promised not to purchase, as the profits are invariably used to do very bad things. They are called "conflict diamonds".
While serving a shockingly brief stint in a Sierra Leone prison for violating that sovereign nation's contraband smuggling rules, DiCaprio happens upon the information that a fellow prisoner (Djimon Hounsou) has hidden a priceless pink diamond on a river bank somewhere in the hinterland while enslaved by the thoroughly revolting rebels who have also turned his 11-year-old son into a murderer. Vicious, corrupt, armed and dangerous, DiCaprio is the protege of a South African mercenary and diamond merchant played by the vengeful 5,000-year-old pharaonic aide-de-camp who comes back to life in The Mummy and makes things miserable for everybody.
Thoroughly unprincipled, handy with firearms, brandishing the most flamboyant Rhodesian accent to grace the silver screen in decades, and not particularly nice, the stone-free DiCaprio does not initially look like the white man who will help Hounsou find his son, escape from Sierra Leone, bring corrupt white diamond merchants to justice and live happily ever after. No, that role would seem to fall to the radiant Jennifer Connelly, here playing an American journalist determined to make the world safe for democracy, if not through her literary skills, then by transfixing an entire continent with her Children of the Corn stare and putting them all to sleep in a kind of hypnotically induced ceasefire. As was the case in Requiem for a Dream, Pollock, A Beautiful Mind, House of Sand and Fog, The Hulk and Dark Water, Connelly's mere presence in a film guarantees that things will turn out badly for the male lead, as Connelly is always cast as the Angel of Death. Fun to hang out with, great eyes, amazing eyebrows, but the Angel of Death.
Despite Connelly's beatific stature as the White Journalist Who Cares - and Cares Deeply - she gradually finds her role as the anointed one filched from right under her by the morally recrudescent DiCaprio. For, as the film proceeds, and as more and more horrible black rebels kill off horrible black soldiers representing the horrible black regime - every black person in the film is either a victim or a monster - DiCaprio gradually comes to realise that there are more important things in life than money, that ebony needs ivory, that diamonds are not forever.
Zwick would thus have us believe that in a society ravaged by a murderous civil war, where black children are routinely kidnapped and induced to murder other black children, after being shot up with heroin purchased with conflict diamonds from horrible white people from out of town, the man who will ultimately bring the villains to justice is a formally depraved Rhodesian mercenary who now prefers justice and racial harmony to wealth. Hmmm, say I to Mr Zwick. Hmmm!
Blood Diamond joins a growing body of films set in Africa in which good vanquishes evil because morally upstanding white folks ultimately triumph over truly satanic white folks. Meanwhile, the entire black African population kind of takes a back seat and watches the honkies duke it out. For example, in The Constant Gardener, Rachel Weisz plays an incorruptible white woman who is murdered by a gang of racially mixed thugs in the employ of the thoroughly evil white man Bill Nighy, all because she has stumbled upon damning proof that white-owned pharmaceutical companies - the very worst kind - have been secretly using ordinary black people as guinea pigs in their perfidious experiments. Bad white people! Bad! But, by the end of the film, the very wicked, very white Nighy will be packed off to the calaboose thanks to the efforts of the very saintly and even more pasty-faced Ralph Fiennes, who lays down his own life for the benefit of impoverished black Africans. To which an entire continent of otherwise invisible black people joyously exclaim: "Hear, hear! Hats off to White Folks!"
Hard-done-by Africans also get a surprising helping hand from white folks in The Interpreter, in which Nicole Kidman plays an African-born translator who accidentally discovers that perfidious black men are planning an a**a**ination involving black men who are not nearly as perfidious. She is able to do this because she is the wrong place at the right time and because the men are speaking in an obscure language that only two white people on the entire planet have mastered: Nicole Kidman and David Attenborough. These films derive directly from such motion pictures as A Dry White Season and Cry the Beloved Country, where the evil that white men do gets swept under the rug by the good that other white men do. In all of these movies the same message comes through: Yes, some white people are bad. Oh, so very, very bad! But when white people are good, well, nobody does it better. That's just the way white people are.
The template for the Up With Caucasians! film was established in 1962 with the release of Robert Mulligan's preposterously overrated To Kill a Mockingbird. Based on a beloved, fabulously successful, thoroughly absurd novel by Harper Lee, who never wrote another book, To Kill a Mockingbird tells the story of two white children living in the Deep South in the 1930s who gradually come to realise what a heroic figure their father cuts after he courageously defends a black man accused of raping a white woman.
The self-congratulatory motion picture was released at a time that black men were still being lynched in the South. Bob Dylan even wrote a song about it. The notion that a black farmhand accused of raping a white woman in the 1930s - 30 years before the film was made - would have ever reached the courthouse in Dixie is somewhat fanciful, as is the director's refusal to dress the white trash who come to bust the innocent man out of jail in the customary garb of the era: freshly laundered sheets. Instead, they are portrayed as hapless rustics who have temporarily misplaced their moral compa** and merely need to come to their senses. You know: Good Ol' Boys.
Pioneeringly foolish, To Kill a Mockingbird establishes the basic theme of all Three Cheers for Whitey! movies: Yes, there are many bad white people out there who do some terrible, terrible things to black people. But when the chips are down and black people are poised on the very precipice of disaster, they can always rely on some thoroughly decent white folks to step in and make sure that justice prevails.
This is the spirit that animates films as varied as Mississippi Burning, where Gene Hackman plays a racist FBI agent who helps bring murderous Klansmen to justice, and A Time to Kill, a typically knuckleheaded Joel Schumacher offering starring Matthew McConaughey and Sandra Bullock as crusading white folks who will do anything to ensure that Samuel L Jackson gets justice in the Deep South. For that matter, it is the theme of Glory Road, a film about an all-black basketball team that beat an all-white basketball team for the 1965 collegiate basketball championship in a truly legendary, watershed contest that changed American society forever, and whose star is the very white Josh Lucas, who plays the black athletes' coach. This is like making a movie about heavyweight boxers in the late 20th century where the champion is a short white guy from south Philadelphia. Who would buy a premise like that?
Given the very nature of the industry - movies are driven by stars, and most stars tend to be good-looking white people - it is hardly surprising that so many motion pictures celebrating truly wonderful white folks should hit the screens. Still, I don't know how black people can stand this stuff. In fact, I don't know how Japanese people can stand it. Zwick, who seems to specialise in historically improbable multicultural films, also made the hilarious The Last Samurai, starring Tom Cruise as a pistol-packin' mercenary who does everything he can to preserve Japan's rapidly dying samurai tradition from the encroachments of rifle-bearing locals on the payroll of avaricious westerners.
In Blood Diamond, Zwick is back to his old tricks. Yes, those darned Caucasians back in foggy olde London Towne are stirring up trouble in West Africa by illicitly trafficking in conflict diamonds. And that's making life hard for innocent black people, even though the nastiest villains in the film are blacks. But once a couple of gifted, determined white folks arrive on the scene, you can rest a**ured that the grapes of wrath will get trampled in the Lord's vineyard with the help of Leonardo DiCaprio's terrible swift sword, Luger, AK-47, whatever. To hear Connelly tell it, this whole damn war would come to a screeching halt if only white men back in Beverly Hills would stop buying conflict diamonds for their trashy girlfriends.
"People back home wouldn't buy a diamond ring if they knew it had cost someone a hand," says Connelly.
Says who?
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
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'Blood Diamonds are thicker than water...'
In related news:
President Festus Mogae was on a state visit to the US last week preaching how (in Botswana) "We love rich people coz they buy our diamonds". Certainly a more sincere plea than that of Russell Simmonds but surely not as important in the eyes of western media & aristocrat America.
to the north in North Eastern Zimbabwe's Manicaland province villagers are literally PICKING UP precious gems resembling diamonds. Quick to the draw some diamond buyers have already established contact with the "natives" of the land & are offering give-away prices for precious gem stones.
Mining companies are lined up to pitch for the exploration rights but business in Zimbabwe works a little different.
Could it be the resurgence of the Zimbabwean economy could be fuelled by relatively recently discovered gem stones?...
Watch this space!
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'Blood Diamonds are thicker than water...'
Could it be the resurgence of the Zimbabwean economy could be fuelled by relatively recently discovered gem stones?...
Watch this space!
No gem stones will resurrect the Zim economy. As we know, minerals dont mean ish when key political problems are unsolved. Just look at the internecine conflicts in many \mineral rih nations on the continent. even if zim was stable / in a post Mugabe era (say in 20 yeras time :lol: ), "gem stones" would still be insufficient to ressurect the country's economy. it's going to take decades to rebuild Zim into the powerful nation that it was and could be.
Zim can also be affected by what is known as the Dutch disease. (I dont know why it's called that). Basically this concept states that the discovery of minerals/natural resources can negativly affect it's manufacturing/industrial sector (esp. exports) due to the possibility of a stronger currency making manufactured exports less competitive. maybe would not be a problem in Zim as it does not have a very strong manufacturing sector in any case.
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Ten Reasons Why You Should Never Accept a Diamond Ring from Anyone, Under Any Circumstances, Even If They Really Want to Give You One (2/14/02)
By Liz Stanton, CPE Staff Economist
1. You've Been Psychologically Conditioned To Want a Diamond
The diamond engagement ring is a 63-year-old invention of N.W.Ayer advertising agency. The De Beers diamond cartel contracted N.W.Ayer to create a demand for what are, essentially, useless hunks of rock.
2. Diamonds are Priced Well Above Their Value
The De Beers cartel has systematically held diamond prices at levels far greater than their abundance would generate under anything even remotely resembling perfect competition. All diamonds not already under its control are bought by the cartel, and then the De Beers cartel carefully managed world diamond supply in order to keep prices steadily high.
3. Diamonds Have No Resale or Investment Value
Any diamond that you buy or receive will indeed be yours forever: De Beers’ advertising deliberately brain-washed women not to sell; the steady price is a tool to prevent speculation in diamonds; and no dealer will buy a diamond from you. You can only sell it at a diamond purchasing center or a pawn shop where you will receive a tiny fraction of its original "value."
4. Diamond Miners are Disproportionately Exposed to HIV/AIDS
Many diamond mining camps enforce all-male, no-family rules. Men contract HIV/AIDS from camp sex-workers, while women married to miners have no access to employment, no income outside of their husbands and no bargaining power for negotiating safe sex, and thus are at extremely high risk of contracting HIV.
5. Open-Pit Diamond Mines Pose Environmental Threats
Diamond mines are open pits where salts, heavy minerals, organisms, oil, and chemicals from mining equipment freely leach into ground-water, endangering people in nearby mining camps and villages, as well as downstream plants and animals.
6. Diamond Mine-Owners Violate Indigenous People's Rights
Diamond mines in Australia, Canada, India and many countries in Africa are situated on lands traditionally a**ociated with indigenous peoples. Many of these communities have been displaced, while others remain, often at great cost to their health, livelihoods and traditional cultures.
7. Slave Laborers Cut and Polish Diamonds
More than one-half of the world's diamonds are processed in India where many of the cutters and polishers are bonded child laborers. Bonded children work to pay off the debts of their relatives, often unsuccessfully. When they reach adulthood their debt is pa**ed on to their younger siblings or to their own children.
8. Conflict Diamonds Fund Civil Wars in Africa
There is no reliable way to insure that your diamond was not mined or stolen by government or rebel military forces in order to finance civil conflict. Conflict diamonds are traded either for guns or for cash to pay and feed soldiers.
9. Diamond Wars are Fought Using Child Warriors
Many diamond producing governments and rebel forces use children as soldiers, laborers in military camps, and sex slaves. Child soldiers are given drugs to overcome their fear and reluctance to participate in atrocities.
10. Small Arms Trade is Intimately Related to Diamond Smuggling
Illicit diamonds inflame the clandestine trade of small arms. There are 500 million small arms in the world today which are used to kill 500,000 people annually, the vast majority of whom are non-combatants.
http://www.fguide.org/Bulletin/conflictdiamonds.htm
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The Soundtrack to a Poor Man's Revolution:
Lupe Fiasco - Conflict Diamonds (Farenheit 1/15 Mixtape) ~
“Diamonds are forever,
they wont leave in the night i've no fear that they might.
Desert me!!
Uhh, F and F, UP!
Diamonds are forever
Yeah, ya no what im saying
I figure, I feel like i should just, ya no
Show people the other side that wonder where, ya no wat im sayin, that are presently unaware.
They dont know about it, ya no wat im sayin, ya no jus show em theres another side to this thing right here,
its called bling!
[Verse 1:]
Allow me to break down the game,
behind the bracelets, earrings, chains, watches and rings.
The bling,
the crystal incrusted, princess flooded, canary studded, blue coloured and blood stained.
Yeah the older brother of the drug game,
the giver of fame, then take awayer lane.
the empowerer of the kings that came to claims and disease
believe wat the native people were saying.
Believe, mine engagement ring received and flossed at the cost of a bondage child minus pain.
Long ago kings use to wear em in their armour, when they fought other armies, because it used to scare em.
If you wasn't rich couldn't wear em.
Witches use to marry, and they'd shoot you before they share em.
The gift and the curse, the venom and the serum.
Most hated ladies best friend get murked for a clear one.
[Chorus]
Diamonds are forever...
[Verse 2:]
CECIL RHODES sold war and genocide unto the countryside just to get his shine on!
I fear what DE BEERS and his peers use to do before the world really knew just to get they mind on!
Making paper from slave labour and hittin little kids with life time bids making em cut and shine stones.
Inflating the price and making em look nice and i wasnt thinking twice when i was putting mine on.
About a young shorty in Sierra Leone or other conflict countries that people call home.
I figured I would never go to Angola so it never did affect me that made me indirectly.
That my necklace was funding a rebellion or a military coup,
started by malicious that dont believe in following none of Genevas rules.
I was brushing of the haters, trying to be cool.
Didnt have a clue that the rapper was helping the rapers, raiders of the villagers, pillagers of the schools.
Shooters of the innocent, torturers of the witnesses, burners of the businesses,
At my birth there was the few.
Uhh, i aint pushing an agenda homie,
im jus pushing the facts, F*ck Bush!
Cuz theres people doing worse on this earth and there black,
i took it for years now let me bring it back,
We all know on foreign shores that they finance wars, but asks yourself do they finance yours.
When i first got mine i took em out on tour, they only lost half the value when i took em out the store.
Or it was full of moistened nikes and cubics but the jeweller knew i was stupid and that i couldnt prove it.
Feeling like i need it because i do music, to impress the groupies and the interviewers.
So i didnt apraise nor did i loop it, even gave em to my girl thinkin i was cupid.
Homies were all hating hoping they could make me lose it, creeping through my own hood knew i had to remove it.
I see the Russian Mafia, the Jewish Mobsters, the undercover terrorists and the traps for the hustlers.
Homie its a rap for the nonsense rhyming, props to Kanye i call this Conflict Diamonds.
[Chorus]
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I read somewhere that De Beers actually invented the whole concept of giving a diamond ring when you get engaged with the 'Diamonds are Forever' campaign.
It is listed in the top 10 ad campaigns of all time.