A friend of mine just got back from touring the Kimberly diamond mines. "Don't waste your money," she said. "It's not like the old days when you could actually go down into the Big Hole and stand toe-to-toe with the miners. Now you just go up on an observation platform, view a roomful of photographs, visit a small replica of a section of the mine and watch a video." Thanks. You just saved me a 14-hour bus trip to Kimberly -- I can see all that kind of stuff on the web. "But the mine museum there was nice." But is it worth spending 14 hours on a bus? I think not.
"Jane, if you are serious about seeing diamond operations in action, then go tour Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sierra Leone and Liberia. Just put on your flak jacket, get out there and stop being a wimp." Sorry. No can do. I left my flak jacket back in Iraq.
"But why do you wanna know so much about diamond mining anyway?" asked my friend. No, it's not because I'm thinking about getting engaged. But I do watch South Africa's most popular soap opera every night and last week, Steve proposed to Queen and gave her a 15,000-rand diamond the size of a marble -- but only after he had fished it out of the kitchen sink drain where Queen's son Princie had dropped it while Steve and Queen were off on a romantic safari out near Sun City -- the Las Vegas of southern Africa.
The other reason I want to know about diamond mining is that the G-20 is going to meet in Cape Town this November -- to have fun at Sun City, of course (maybe they're run into Queen), but also to have even more Fun cutting up Africa's resources among themselves.
According to Google, "South Africa's Reserve Bank and National Treasury will jointly chair the Group of Twenty (G20) in 2007, Reserve Bank Governor Tito Mboweni announced in Pretoria on Wednesday." Let the games begin! And like the slot machines of Sun City, you just KNOW that whenever a federal reserve bank is involved, the action is always gonna be rigged in favor of the house.
"The G20 was established in 1999," Google continues, "as a forum for the central bank governors and finance ministers of the world's major developed and emerging market economies to discuss issues around global economic development and financial stability." No comment there. We've all been around long enough to know what THAT means.
"Including both the G8 and the most influential emerging [G-8 wannabe] countries [including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, European Union, India, Indonesia, Korea, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Turkey,] the G20 is a key forum on global economic development and governance, covering two-thirds of the world's population and 90% of world output." These people have power over 90% of world output? Now that's downright scary.
Anyway, the global corporate bigwigs are all coming to Africa soon. And how appropriate is that -- to meet on the very continent that has supplied them with ENDLESS wealth over the years.
And while we're drawing analogies here, let's compare G-20 members to beekeepers as well as to casino owners. "Don't do that, Jane. You know that you are allergic to bees." Yeah, but I still gotta soldier on. After all, this is SCIENCE. This is HISTORY. The future of the civilized world is at stake here. Time to suck it up and be brave.
If you think of the G-20 as beekeepers and the continent of Africa as its own personal beehive, you can get an idea of how important this continent is to these corporate guys (stop thinking of them as countries or even corporations-as-persons and start thinking of them as individual robber barons who do NOT have your best interests at heart. Heck, if they thought they could get away with it, they would have YOU working in mines and living in shacks with no running water. ASAP. Instead, however, they are politely and graciously giving you a few more years with electricity and hot showers before they make their move. Gee thanks, guys!)
But let's get back to my fabulous world-class beekeeper analogy. For the last 200-plus years, Africa has been a treasure-trove of honey for the grandfathers, great-grandfathers and fathers of the dudes of the G-8 -- and this is even truer today than it was for the likes of Cecil Rhodes, H.M. Stanley and General Henry Sanford (who lobbied Congress to approve of King Leopold II's slave trade operations after slavery ended because the idea of losing his slave-trade honey-pot was starting to bug Leopold -- a lot) because technology has made it even faster and easier for what is now called the "New World Order" to harvest Africa's many resources, er, honey. The new "Scramble for Africa" is now in high gear.
But the G-8's twelve younger siblings, the new kids on the block who were only officially included in 2003, don't have to worry about the original eight mega-corporations getting all of the "honey". There's still plenty left to go around. Gold, diamonds, uranium, fertile farmlands, platinum, oil....
So. We get the picture. The G-20 has moved in and is happily snagging all the honey. But what has happened to all those poor worker bees, slaving away to make said honey, once the hive has been destroyed? Sorry. No honey for you guys. And no Sun City either!
According to Google, "A good beekeeper knows just how much honey he can take from a hive without destroying the colony." Well, apparently the G-20 aren't very well trained as apiarists. They have managed to do major damage to African worker bees. Those dudes need to go back to bee-keeping school.
"But Jane," you might say, "your analogy sucks eggs. These are PEOPLE you are talking about -- not insects." I know that. You know that. But do the global conglomerates and corporate-owned governments attacking the riches of Africa full-tilt know that too? Apparently not. So. Here I am in Africa and it is Bee Season. Let's take a look at some of the "hives" the G-20 have harvested already or have next on their list. And, also, let's look at some of the tragedies that have befallen said "worker bees" after their nests have been destroyed.
The most obvious place to start looking at major hive damage right now is Darfur. That one has been pretty much smashed. Uranium and oil. As one prominent Middle East expert wrote me recently about Darfur, "Dar in Arabic means House. So, Dar Fur means the House of Fir. But the Darfur problem is not a refugee problem, Jane. It's OIL, OIL, OIL -- and even URANIUM. Thus, it is truly the House of Oil and Uranium, which has brought death and destruction to that area. There's a lot of oil in Darfur. The Chinese already had contracts to produce and market it, but apparently the Western oil companies want a share there too. And Israel supporters don't want the uranium to stay in the hands of the Arab Sudanese government."
Someone else who I've talked with recently was involved with the international Darfur relief effort and he said, "There is plenty of money available to relieve the people of Darfur -- but the big problem is getting the food TO them. Planes fly out of Nairobi with supplies from the WHO, etc. and air-drop them over the Darfur area. However, they don't dare land." What? It's not even safe for the UN to get into Darfur? That sucks eggs. But if you want a more detailed report on Darfur than that, there are hecka lot of eye-witness reports floating around -- dead babies stacked in the streets like cordwood, that kind of stuff. But go Google it yourself. Why should I do all the work?
Stillwater is a freelance writer who hates injustice and corruption in any form but especially injustice and corruption paid for by American taxpayers. She has recently published a book entitled, "Bring Your Own Flak Jacket: Helpful Tips For Touring Today's Middle East". According to Ms. Stillwater, "It's a fabulous and entertaining book. I loved writing it. And I hope that you will love reading it too." It's available at http://www.amazon.com/Bring-Your-Own-Flak-Jacket/dp/0978615719 or you can special order it at any independent bookstore.
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