Children are working in African Gold Mines

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080810/ap_on_re_af/toiling_for_gold

TENKOTO, Senegal - A reef of gold buried beneath this vast, parched grassland arcs across some of the world's poorest countries. Where the ore is rich, industrial mines carve it out. Where it's not, the poor sift the earth.

These hardscrabble miners include many thousands of children. They work long hours at often dangerous jobs in hundreds of primitive mines scattered through the West African bush. Some are as young as 4 years old.

In a yearlong investigation, The Associated Press visited six of these bush mines in three West African countries and interviewed more than 150 child miners. AP journalists watched as child-mined gold was bought by itinerant traders. And, through interviews and customs documents, The AP tracked gold from these mines on a 3,000-mile journey to Mali's capital city and then on to Switzerland, where it enters the world market.

Most bush mines are little more than holes in the ground, but there are thousands of them in Africa, South America and Asia. Together, they produce a fifth of the world's gold, according to United Nations reports. And wherever you find bush mines, these reports and mine experts say, you also find child labor.

If you wear a gold ring on your finger, write with a gold-tipped fountain pen or have gold in your investment portfolio, chances are good your life is connected to these children.

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US Funding for International Planned Parenthood as his first official act in 2001? To ensure global corporations a never ending supply of cheap labor!!!

Pat's a swell guy..:eyes:

It's easy to talk about being concerned, but if one really wants to help stop the problem the place is the marketplace. If everyone sold their gold and diamonds (and didn't buy any others), the markets would be flooded with excess amounts of both items. Recycling would be much cheaper than finding the new stuff.

DEMAND is what keeps children in gold and diamonds.

They have blood on them. Gold and diamond jewelry are symbols that the wearer is part of the international demand that sends kids into mines.

Why not just stick a bone in one's nose?

Or stretch the lips way out?

Or stretch the neck?

Or wrap the feet?

Wearing jewelry is an age old method of flaunting wealth. Anyone who wears a big diamond ring should be embarrassed to do so. Same of gold. What's the point? If one thinks it looks good, that's just their cultural socialization working.

Can you imagine how silly we would think any other animal was that adorned itself with jewelry?

Here's a progressive notion: sell all jewelry and spend the proceeds on a soup kitchen.

I have not owned or bought any jewelry in over 25 years, and I will never buy jewelry, nor would I accept it.

I have just returned from hell I'm trying to figure out how to communicate what I have seen


I have just returned from hell. I am trying for the life of me to figure out how to communicate what I have seen and heard in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. How do I convey these stories of atrocities without your shutting down, quickly turning the page or feeling too disturbed?

Eve Ensler, Glamour Magazine, August 2007

http://www.allthingspass.com/uploads/html-230THREE ...

THREE CHEERS FOR EVE ENSLER?
Propaganda, White Collar Crime
and Sexual Atrocities in Eastern Congo


Third Draft: October 10, 2007


keith harmon snow

www.althingspass.com


On a visit to Eastern Congo in May 2007, Eve Ensler—the playwright and producer of the Vagina Monologues—was witness to the profound human suffering and unprecedented sexual violence. Ensler came to see what those whose eyes are open cannot deny: the sexual violence and predation in Central Africa is unacceptable, unfathomable, and stoppable. And she has the courage and audacity to write and speak about it.

Three cheers for Eve Ensler!!

Or not?

Through her global campaign to end violence against women, called “V-Day,” and with a nine-page feature article in Glamour magazine in August, Ensler has launched a campaign calling for an end to rape and sexual torture against women and girls in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

“Stop Raping Our Greatest Resource, Power To The Women And Girls Of The Democratic Republic Of Congo,” Ensler’s web site explains, “is being initiated by the women of Eastern DRC, V-Day and UNICEF on behalf of United Nations Action Against Sexual Violence in Conflict. The campaign calls for an end to the violence and to impunity for those who commit these atrocities.” <1>

Impunity for those who commit these atrocities?

Ensler’s Glamour article is an apt documentary of human suffering and courage. The doctors working to save and heal the survivors of sexual brutality are heroes. The women and girls who have survived are themselves portraits of courage and human dignity.

In her nine-page portrait of heroism and suffering, there is a single half paragraph that ostensibly addresses the roots of the problem. “The perpetrators include the Interahamwe,” Ensler writes, “the Hutu fighters who fled neighboring Rwanda in 1994 after committing genocide there; the Congolese army; a loose assortment of armed civilians; even U.N. peacekeepers.” <2>


THE GLAMOUROUS GENOCIDE

Who is responsible for the brutality?

According to Glamour and Vanity Fair, it is always those rag-tag Rwandan genocidaires who fled justice in Rwanda, or those ruthless Congolese soldiers from the heart of darkness, and the loose assortments of obviously “loose” civilians, and even the U.N. peacekeepers who, in the United Nations Observers Mission in Congo (MONUC), are men from India, Uruguay, Nepal, Pakistan… and in Darfur, Sudan, it is those damned Janjaweed—Arabs on horseback, you know, the usual dark-skinned subjects.


http://www.allthingspass.com/uploads/html-203BD%20 ...

Blood Diamond: Double Think & Deception
Naming the players behind the scenes


Guns and Butter interview

A look at the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1U28joj6d1A&eurl=

A look at the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EMMQhHuI9_Y&eurl=

A look at the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biEXCEOy_vs&eurl=

A look at the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPKcgo4Es8E&eurl=

A look at the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (5)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIM8kVSN8ug&eurl=

A look at the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) (6)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_WEY7xQEhk&eurl=


http://www.slate.com/id/2097314 /

On the Trail of the Congo's "Cannibal Rebels"





4 MILLION DEAD SINCE 1998 - THIS IS GENOCIDE

That's why people will line up by the hundreds to post condemning a puppy killing, but don't give a shit about kids dying in gold and diamond mines. The way many progressives turn a blind eye to this problem reminds me of the story of the rich young man who asked Jesus what else he should do. When Jesus said "give all that you have to the poor and follow me," the young man walked away forlorn, for he had much wealth.

Diamonds and gold jewelry are bloody, and if one wants to try to stop the horrible mining practices, stopping the demand for gold and diamonds in jewelry and increasing the supply of used jewelry is a step that one can take.