Yesterday I was ranting and raving about the Finish elections. I have now found out that there's a very good reason for it. So with apologies to my Finish friends, here it is:
The thing is that Finish representatives 15th of February 1362 for the first time participated in the Swedish Royal elections. Royal elections? I hear you cry. Yes, in the old days the Nordic kings were elected. Usually the late kings oldest son was elected, but sometimes not. And when the King had no male decendants, there was an open field. Like with my family. My ancestor, the king of Norway, Hkon Hkonsen had no male decendants, his only offspring was my great-great-great-etc-grandmother. But she was a woman, born out of wedlock, so his brother was elected the new king instead.
Well, this time King Hkon of Norway was elected king of Sweden together with king Magnus.
Because of this, for Finland, very important election, when Finland became a republic in 1919, they decided that the election date should be on the 15th of February. When they made the new Constitution, they moved it to the 15th of January.
I appologize again to my Finnish friends for doubting that there was a logical reason.
...
Now to another thing I often rant and rave about:
Stark warning over climate change
By Richard Black
Environment Correspondent, BBC News website
Rising concentrations of greenhouse gases may have more serious impacts than previously believed, a major scientific report has said.
The report, published by the UK government, says there is only a small chance of greenhouse gas emissions being kept below "dangerous" levels.
It fears the Greenland ice sheet is likely to melt, leading sea levels to rise by 7m (23ft) over 1,000 years.
The poorest countries will be most vulnerable to these effects, it adds.
The report, Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, collates evidence presented by scientists at a conference hosted by the UK Meteorological Office in February 2005.
The conference set two principal objectives: to ask what level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is too much, and what the options are for avoiding such a level.
It's the irreversibility that I think brings it home to people
- Margaret Beckett
In the report's foreword, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair writes that "it is now plain that the emission of greenhouse gases... is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable."
Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett said the report's conclusions would be a shock to many people.
"The thing that is perhaps not so familiar to members of the public... is this notion that we could come to a tipping point where change could be irreversible," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"We're not talking about it happening over five minutes, of course, maybe over a thousand years, but it's the irreversibility that I think brings it home to people."
The report sets out the effects of various levels of temperature increase.
The European Union (EU) has adopted a target of preventing a rise in global average temperature of more than two degrees Celsius.
But that, according to the report, might be too high, with two degrees perhaps enough to trigger melting of the Greenland ice sheet.
This would have a major impact on sea levels globally, though it would take up to 1,000 years to see the full predicted rise of 7m.
Above two degrees, says the report, the risks increase "very substantially", with "potentially large numbers of extinctions" and "major increases in hunger and water shortage risks... particularly in developing countries".
The report asked scientists to calculate which greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere would be enough to cause these "dangerous" temperature increases.
"No country is going to turn off a power station which is providing much-desired energy for its population to tackle this problem." -Sir David King
Currently, the atmosphere contains about 380 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, compared to levels before the industrial revolution of about 275ppm.
To have a good chance of achieving the EU's two-degree target, levels should be stabilised at 450ppm or below, the report concludes.
But, speaking on Today, the UK government's chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, said that was unlikely to happen.
"We're going to be at 400 ppm in 10 years' time, I predict that without any delight in saying it," he said.
"But no country is going to turn off a power station which is providing much-desired energy for its population to tackle this problem - we have to accept that.
"To aim for 450 (ppm) would, I am afraid, seem unfeasible."
But Myles Allen, a lecturer on atmospheric physics at Oxford University, said assessing a "safe level" of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was "a bit like asking a doctor what's a safe number of cigarettes to smoke per day".
"There isn't one, but at the same time people do smoke and live until they're 90," he told Today.
On the other question asked at the 2005 conference - what are the options for avoiding dangerous concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere? - the report says that technological options to reduce emissions do exist.
It concludes that the biggest obstacles to the take up of technologies such as renewable sources of energy and "clean coal" lie in vested interests, cultural barriers to change and simple lack of awareness.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/4660938.stm
Published: 2006/01/30 11:00:31 GMT
BBC MMVI
Now those of you who have read what I have written on this subject earlier know that I belong to the wing who predict that the melting will take a lot shorter time than that, ie that it will happen in 100 years. This is because the process is steadily accilerating. Factor in this fact, and you get the much shorter scenario.
...
NAA no 13: Ole Einar Bjrndalen - World Championship gold in Biathlon - simultanious start.
Biathlon again. As I mentioned eralier, Norwegians love this sport. And I have to admit that it is my personal favourite too.
What: 23. March 2003 Ole Einar Bjrndalen got his second World Championship gold in the tactically most demanding distance of them all, after being the only one to shoot a full house in up to 7 metres/second wind.
Where: Khanty-Mansiysk, Sibiria, Russia
Why: Bjrndalen crowned a season where he won the world cup series, and the way he did it was unparalelled. Even if he did miss quite a bit on some of the World Championship distances, this time he hit 20 of 20. None of the others had less than 3 misses. Legendary Frank Ulrich said afterwards that he had never seen anything like it, and that actually says it all.
Watch out for Bjrndalen in the comming Olympics!
...
Blood Diamonds
AFRICA: Illegal Diamond Trade Funds War in Sierra Leone (Report from 2000, but sadly still as valid today as it was six years ago).
Peace cannot be sustained in Sierra Leone until controls are imposed on the illegal selling of diamonds used to finance its civil war, according to a recent study.
The study, titled "The Heart of the Matter Sierra Leone, Diamonds and Human Security," was released in January by Partnership Africa Canada. Two of the study's authors, Ian Smillie and Lansana Gberie, discussed their findings at an April 18 briefing sponsored by the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries.
In his introduction, the Rev. Paul Dirdak, chief executive of the board's United Methodist Committee on Relief, noted that the report is important to the denomination because of its churches in West Africa and an overall concern for public welfare in those countries, such as Sierra Leone and Angola, affected by the "conflict diamond" trade.
The study itself grew out of discussions held by the Sierra Leone Working Group, an informal organization based in Ottawa. The group considered the civil war in Sierra Leone from an economic perspective, rather than a political one, and realized the conflict would not have been as long or as brutal "if there hadn't been money to pay for it," Smillie said.
In fact, politics or ethnic conflict played a very small role, they discovered. Gberie, who spent six years covering the Sierra Leone war as a reporter, noted, "even when I was there, no one knew why the rebels were fighting. Everyone said it was a senseless war."
The decade-long war -- which has claimed more than 75,000 lives, resulted in half a million refugees and displaced half of Sierra Leone's 4.5 million people -- was not sparked by the failure of several post-colonial governments, according to the study. "Only the economic opportunity presented by a breakdown in law and order could sustain violence at the levels that have plagued Sierra Leone since 1991," it said.
"The point of the war may not actually have been to win it, but to engage in profitable crime under the cover of warfare," the study continued. "Diamonds, in fact, have fueled Sierra Leone's conflict, destabilizing the country for the better part of three decades, stealing its patrimony and robbing an entire generation of children, putting the country dead last on the United Nations Development Program Human Development Index."
Often, the atrocities committed in recent years by the rebels in Sierra Leone, such as hacking off limbs, are used as a means of driving others away. "There is a process of displacement and dislocation of people," Gberie explained.
The tools of war are being purchased with the illegal diamonds. "Small arms are getting into these places because people are exchanging them for diamonds," he said.
The DeBeers group, a mining company that acts as a wholesaler, controls 70 percent of the world's diamonds in a given year, and many rough diamonds are processed through the diamond industry in Antwerp, Belgium, represented by the Diamond High Council. "The diamonds that are stolen come into Antwerp unregulated, unchecked," Smillie charged. "There is a huge laundering business that is going on between Africa and Belgium."
He pointed out that 30 million carats have passed from Liberia - considered to be a transit point for conflict diamonds -- to Antwerp over the past five years, representing "billions of dollars worth of stolen diamonds." He estimated that at least 10 percent of the diamonds on the world market are stolen.
The report's key recommendations for breaking the hold of the diamond-fueled war include:
Creating a permanent and independent International Diamond Standards Commission, under the United Nations, "to establish and monitor codes of conduct on governmental and corporate responsibility in the global diamond industry."
Providing international help to the Sierra Leone government to, in Smillie's words, "get a grip on the diamond industry." Peacekeeping troops, for example, need to expand to the diamond mining areas currently held by rebels.
Conducting a high-level investigation into the criminal elements of the Belgian diamond trade.
Creating a legitimate channel for selling diamonds from Sierra Leone.
Putting an effort into basic human development in Sierra Leone, as well as the creation of jobs for young men otherwise lured into the illegal activities.
Instituting a full embargo by the United Nations Security Council on the purchase of any diamonds originating in, or said to originate in Liberia.
"Liberia has become a major criminal entrepot (center) for diamonds, guns, money laundering, terror and other forms of organized crime," the report declared.
"The astoundingly high levels of its diamond exports bear no relationship to its own limited resource base. By accepting Liberian exports as legitimate, the international diamond industry actively colludes in crimes committed or permitted by the Liberian government."
The report from Partnership Africa Canada - which was broadcast on national radio in Sierra Leone the day of its release - has sparked reaction and pledges of improvement from the diamond industry, according to Smillie, but the issue will need continued monitoring and pressure from outside groups.
"We feel the diamond industry itself has a lot of the power and influence to clean this up," he added.
In the meantime, consumers need to be educated about the issue and about where some of the diamonds in today's market come from. "The word 'boycott' does not appear in this report," the document said. "Certainly a boycott could damage the industry. But the idea of a campaign is different: it is about transparency, change and urgency.
"Where people's lives are concerned - as they are in Sierra Leone - time is of the essence. In the absence of clear and meaningful movement within the industry and among other international actors, the point of a campaign would be to help the industry 'take responsibility for its actions' - not damaging it, but improving it."
Up to date report:
Lessons from West Africa's dirty war
By Mark Doyle
BBC World Affairs correspondent
It looked more like a child's vision of the surface of the moon than a West African town.
Koidu, in eastern Sierra Leone, in August 2001, had been dug over so comprehensively that it resembled a lunar landscape.
Everywhere I looked there were giant watery holes surrounded by piles of gravel.
And in the holes, hundreds of diamond miners were panning for gems.
They were digging in what was once the main road; they were digging in the marketplace.
In one house I peered into, they were even digging in the living room.
A United Nations peacekeeper from Pakistan was posted on a small bridge across a stream in the middle of the town. I asked him what he was doing there.
"I'm protecting the bridge," he replied.
"From what?" I wondered. "I thought the war was over?"
"I'm protecting the bridge from being destroyed by these miners," came the pragmatic reply.
"If these guys dig under here, the bridge will fall down and we won't be able to drive our lorries to the UN camp up the road".
Koidu, five years ago, was a symbol of much that was wrong in Sierra Leone.
Most of the miners were former rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) who, having decided their attempt to seize power was now thwarted by a combination of UN troops and a British military intervention, had turned to mining.
The digging was completely illegal and most of the gemstones would be smuggled to neighbouring Liberia rather than go through the Sierra Leone government's books to (possibly) benefit the people of Sierra Leone.
The RUF miners were a law unto themselves; many of them, out of sight of the UN, had guns which they used to settle their arguments or press gang men into working for them.
The UN troops turned a blind eye to the smuggling because some of the rebels were co-operating with a disarmament programme - and, in any case, it would have been impossible for the thinly spread troops to stop the hordes of diggers.
Diamonds have always been at the heart of Sierra Leone's problems. Ever since the first commercial mines were opened by the British colonial authorities in 1931, they have been both the prize and the fuel in conflicts.
Sierra Leonean researcher and journalist Lansana Gberie argues in his new study of the war that diamonds gave the RUF insurgents both a motivation and a resource base to fight.
Mr Gberie's analysis centres on the criminalisation of the state, funded largely by diamonds, which began under long-time leader Siaka Stevens, in power from 1968 to 1985.
He argues that Stevens steadily undermined the institutions of state (the army, the courts, and social services like education and health care) by corruption, much of it through Lebanese intermediaries.
This, Mr Gberie says, meant the RUF had a relatively easy task in mounting its insurgency because there was little resistance from rotten state structures - including the army, which not only failed to stop the RUF but partly ended up joining them.
The insurgency was characterised by terror attacks on civilians, including the widespread hacking off of people's limbs.
This had the twin effect of making populations flee - so making looting easier - and terrifying others into submission.
In the end it was the UN - with backing from a British military intervention - which restored the elected government to Sierra Leone after war and coups had almost destroyed it.
Mr Gberie's thesis is not new, of course. But the detail he gives from his perspective as a Sierra Leonean journalist who has also worked as a researcher into the international diamond market, is probably unique.
He has worked for the organisation Partnership Africa Canada which lobbied effectively for Sierra Leone to fight against the trade in "conflict diamonds".
The brief history he gives of the British colonial state, for example, is particularly refreshing. Many Sierra Leoneans, exhausted and battered by the war, tend to idealise that history, presenting it as a peaceful idyll.
This tendency was exacerbated by the British military intervention in 2000 which stopped a probable coup by the much-feared RUF.
During the intervention it was common for people spontaneously to shout "God Bless The British," whenever they saw a squaddie sporting a Union Jack badge.
In fact, although the modern British action was extremely popular among Sierra Leoneans, the colonial idyll, if there was one, only really benefited a few tens of thousands of people in the colony of Freetown and its immediate environs.
Many of these were the descendants of African immigrants to the country who benefited from the higher education and decent services on offer in the capital.
Mr Gberie's study reminds us that the vast majority of Sierra Leoneans in the hinterland (or "The Protectorate") were not touched by the "civilising" power except when it came to foreign soldiers or policemen extracting hut tax from them.
The author also has some telling nuggets on the more recent dramatis personae in the Sierra Leone war.
It is often forgotten these days, for example, that Muammar Gaddafi, a man now courted by the West, was one of the creators of the chaos in West Africa in the 1990s.
The Libyan leader helped finance the early activities of a small group of "revolutionaries" including Charles Taylor, who became the president of Liberia, and the RUF leader Foday Sankoh.
The new study identifies the corruption and failures of the Sierra Leone army as one of the key elements that led to the collapse of the state in the 1990s and details its demise in admirable detail.
However, it would have been useful to know more about today's army, which has received considerable training and new equipment from Britain, and whether it has any more backbone.
One of the commanders of the British intervention force told me in 2000 his project was "to build the country back up, starting with the government army as the first building block".
I recall thinking, at the time, that this was a rather self-important thing for a soldier to say.
But I was wrong - Mr Gberie's study shows just how crucial an army, or the lack of a decent one, can be to the life of a nation.
What Sierra Leoneans want to know now is whether the new, British-trained army, is much better than the old one; would it resist any new insurgency and defend democracy or would it join the miners in Koidu?
One suspects that Lansana Gberies' contacts with politicians are rather better than his contacts with the military because this book does not really answer this crucial question - perhaps that should be the subject of his next study.
Nevertheless, this book is a valuable addition to the literature on the Sierra Leone war, written by a well-informed Sierra Leonean intellectual.
It details the collapse of a state through corrupt neglect and direct criminal activity.
It is a warning to many countries.
A Dirty War In West Africa - the RUF and the destruction of Sierra Leone by Lansana Gberie, Hurst and Company, London, 2005
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/africa/4603382.stm
Published: 2006/01/12 12:29:59 GMT
The thing is that Finish representatives 15th of February 1362 for the first time participated in the Swedish Royal elections. Royal elections? I hear you cry. Yes, in the old days the Nordic kings were elected. Usually the late kings oldest son was elected, but sometimes not. And when the King had no male decendants, there was an open field. Like with my family. My ancestor, the king of Norway, Hkon Hkonsen had no male decendants, his only offspring was my great-great-great-etc-grandmother. But she was a woman, born out of wedlock, so his brother was elected the new king instead.
Well, this time King Hkon of Norway was elected king of Sweden together with king Magnus.
Because of this, for Finland, very important election, when Finland became a republic in 1919, they decided that the election date should be on the 15th of February. When they made the new Constitution, they moved it to the 15th of January.
I appologize again to my Finnish friends for doubting that there was a logical reason.
...
Now to another thing I often rant and rave about:
Stark warning over climate change
By Richard Black
Environment Correspondent, BBC News website
Rising concentrations of greenhouse gases may have more serious impacts than previously believed, a major scientific report has said.
The report, published by the UK government, says there is only a small chance of greenhouse gas emissions being kept below "dangerous" levels.
It fears the Greenland ice sheet is likely to melt, leading sea levels to rise by 7m (23ft) over 1,000 years.
The poorest countries will be most vulnerable to these effects, it adds.
The report, Avoiding Dangerous Climate Change, collates evidence presented by scientists at a conference hosted by the UK Meteorological Office in February 2005.
The conference set two principal objectives: to ask what level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is too much, and what the options are for avoiding such a level.
It's the irreversibility that I think brings it home to people
- Margaret Beckett
In the report's foreword, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair writes that "it is now plain that the emission of greenhouse gases... is causing global warming at a rate that is unsustainable."
Environment Secretary Margaret Beckett said the report's conclusions would be a shock to many people.
"The thing that is perhaps not so familiar to members of the public... is this notion that we could come to a tipping point where change could be irreversible," she told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
"We're not talking about it happening over five minutes, of course, maybe over a thousand years, but it's the irreversibility that I think brings it home to people."
The report sets out the effects of various levels of temperature increase.
The European Union (EU) has adopted a target of preventing a rise in global average temperature of more than two degrees Celsius.
But that, according to the report, might be too high, with two degrees perhaps enough to trigger melting of the Greenland ice sheet.
This would have a major impact on sea levels globally, though it would take up to 1,000 years to see the full predicted rise of 7m.
Above two degrees, says the report, the risks increase "very substantially", with "potentially large numbers of extinctions" and "major increases in hunger and water shortage risks... particularly in developing countries".
The report asked scientists to calculate which greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere would be enough to cause these "dangerous" temperature increases.
"No country is going to turn off a power station which is providing much-desired energy for its population to tackle this problem." -Sir David King
Currently, the atmosphere contains about 380 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas, compared to levels before the industrial revolution of about 275ppm.
To have a good chance of achieving the EU's two-degree target, levels should be stabilised at 450ppm or below, the report concludes.
But, speaking on Today, the UK government's chief scientific adviser, Sir David King, said that was unlikely to happen.
"We're going to be at 400 ppm in 10 years' time, I predict that without any delight in saying it," he said.
"But no country is going to turn off a power station which is providing much-desired energy for its population to tackle this problem - we have to accept that.
"To aim for 450 (ppm) would, I am afraid, seem unfeasible."
But Myles Allen, a lecturer on atmospheric physics at Oxford University, said assessing a "safe level" of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was "a bit like asking a doctor what's a safe number of cigarettes to smoke per day".
"There isn't one, but at the same time people do smoke and live until they're 90," he told Today.
On the other question asked at the 2005 conference - what are the options for avoiding dangerous concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere? - the report says that technological options to reduce emissions do exist.
It concludes that the biggest obstacles to the take up of technologies such as renewable sources of energy and "clean coal" lie in vested interests, cultural barriers to change and simple lack of awareness.
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/4660938.stm
Published: 2006/01/30 11:00:31 GMT
BBC MMVI
Now those of you who have read what I have written on this subject earlier know that I belong to the wing who predict that the melting will take a lot shorter time than that, ie that it will happen in 100 years. This is because the process is steadily accilerating. Factor in this fact, and you get the much shorter scenario.
...
NAA no 13: Ole Einar Bjrndalen - World Championship gold in Biathlon - simultanious start.
Biathlon again. As I mentioned eralier, Norwegians love this sport. And I have to admit that it is my personal favourite too.
What: 23. March 2003 Ole Einar Bjrndalen got his second World Championship gold in the tactically most demanding distance of them all, after being the only one to shoot a full house in up to 7 metres/second wind.
Where: Khanty-Mansiysk, Sibiria, Russia
Why: Bjrndalen crowned a season where he won the world cup series, and the way he did it was unparalelled. Even if he did miss quite a bit on some of the World Championship distances, this time he hit 20 of 20. None of the others had less than 3 misses. Legendary Frank Ulrich said afterwards that he had never seen anything like it, and that actually says it all.
Watch out for Bjrndalen in the comming Olympics!
...
Blood Diamonds
AFRICA: Illegal Diamond Trade Funds War in Sierra Leone (Report from 2000, but sadly still as valid today as it was six years ago).
Peace cannot be sustained in Sierra Leone until controls are imposed on the illegal selling of diamonds used to finance its civil war, according to a recent study.
The study, titled "The Heart of the Matter Sierra Leone, Diamonds and Human Security," was released in January by Partnership Africa Canada. Two of the study's authors, Ian Smillie and Lansana Gberie, discussed their findings at an April 18 briefing sponsored by the United Methodist Board of Global Ministries.
In his introduction, the Rev. Paul Dirdak, chief executive of the board's United Methodist Committee on Relief, noted that the report is important to the denomination because of its churches in West Africa and an overall concern for public welfare in those countries, such as Sierra Leone and Angola, affected by the "conflict diamond" trade.
The study itself grew out of discussions held by the Sierra Leone Working Group, an informal organization based in Ottawa. The group considered the civil war in Sierra Leone from an economic perspective, rather than a political one, and realized the conflict would not have been as long or as brutal "if there hadn't been money to pay for it," Smillie said.
In fact, politics or ethnic conflict played a very small role, they discovered. Gberie, who spent six years covering the Sierra Leone war as a reporter, noted, "even when I was there, no one knew why the rebels were fighting. Everyone said it was a senseless war."
The decade-long war -- which has claimed more than 75,000 lives, resulted in half a million refugees and displaced half of Sierra Leone's 4.5 million people -- was not sparked by the failure of several post-colonial governments, according to the study. "Only the economic opportunity presented by a breakdown in law and order could sustain violence at the levels that have plagued Sierra Leone since 1991," it said.
"The point of the war may not actually have been to win it, but to engage in profitable crime under the cover of warfare," the study continued. "Diamonds, in fact, have fueled Sierra Leone's conflict, destabilizing the country for the better part of three decades, stealing its patrimony and robbing an entire generation of children, putting the country dead last on the United Nations Development Program Human Development Index."
Often, the atrocities committed in recent years by the rebels in Sierra Leone, such as hacking off limbs, are used as a means of driving others away. "There is a process of displacement and dislocation of people," Gberie explained.
The tools of war are being purchased with the illegal diamonds. "Small arms are getting into these places because people are exchanging them for diamonds," he said.
The DeBeers group, a mining company that acts as a wholesaler, controls 70 percent of the world's diamonds in a given year, and many rough diamonds are processed through the diamond industry in Antwerp, Belgium, represented by the Diamond High Council. "The diamonds that are stolen come into Antwerp unregulated, unchecked," Smillie charged. "There is a huge laundering business that is going on between Africa and Belgium."
He pointed out that 30 million carats have passed from Liberia - considered to be a transit point for conflict diamonds -- to Antwerp over the past five years, representing "billions of dollars worth of stolen diamonds." He estimated that at least 10 percent of the diamonds on the world market are stolen.
The report's key recommendations for breaking the hold of the diamond-fueled war include:
Creating a permanent and independent International Diamond Standards Commission, under the United Nations, "to establish and monitor codes of conduct on governmental and corporate responsibility in the global diamond industry."
Providing international help to the Sierra Leone government to, in Smillie's words, "get a grip on the diamond industry." Peacekeeping troops, for example, need to expand to the diamond mining areas currently held by rebels.
Conducting a high-level investigation into the criminal elements of the Belgian diamond trade.
Creating a legitimate channel for selling diamonds from Sierra Leone.
Putting an effort into basic human development in Sierra Leone, as well as the creation of jobs for young men otherwise lured into the illegal activities.
Instituting a full embargo by the United Nations Security Council on the purchase of any diamonds originating in, or said to originate in Liberia.
"Liberia has become a major criminal entrepot (center) for diamonds, guns, money laundering, terror and other forms of organized crime," the report declared.
"The astoundingly high levels of its diamond exports bear no relationship to its own limited resource base. By accepting Liberian exports as legitimate, the international diamond industry actively colludes in crimes committed or permitted by the Liberian government."
The report from Partnership Africa Canada - which was broadcast on national radio in Sierra Leone the day of its release - has sparked reaction and pledges of improvement from the diamond industry, according to Smillie, but the issue will need continued monitoring and pressure from outside groups.
"We feel the diamond industry itself has a lot of the power and influence to clean this up," he added.
In the meantime, consumers need to be educated about the issue and about where some of the diamonds in today's market come from. "The word 'boycott' does not appear in this report," the document said. "Certainly a boycott could damage the industry. But the idea of a campaign is different: it is about transparency, change and urgency.
"Where people's lives are concerned - as they are in Sierra Leone - time is of the essence. In the absence of clear and meaningful movement within the industry and among other international actors, the point of a campaign would be to help the industry 'take responsibility for its actions' - not damaging it, but improving it."
Up to date report:
Lessons from West Africa's dirty war
By Mark Doyle
BBC World Affairs correspondent
It looked more like a child's vision of the surface of the moon than a West African town.
Koidu, in eastern Sierra Leone, in August 2001, had been dug over so comprehensively that it resembled a lunar landscape.
Everywhere I looked there were giant watery holes surrounded by piles of gravel.
And in the holes, hundreds of diamond miners were panning for gems.
They were digging in what was once the main road; they were digging in the marketplace.
In one house I peered into, they were even digging in the living room.
A United Nations peacekeeper from Pakistan was posted on a small bridge across a stream in the middle of the town. I asked him what he was doing there.
"I'm protecting the bridge," he replied.
"From what?" I wondered. "I thought the war was over?"
"I'm protecting the bridge from being destroyed by these miners," came the pragmatic reply.
"If these guys dig under here, the bridge will fall down and we won't be able to drive our lorries to the UN camp up the road".
Koidu, five years ago, was a symbol of much that was wrong in Sierra Leone.
Most of the miners were former rebels of the Revolutionary United Front (RUF) who, having decided their attempt to seize power was now thwarted by a combination of UN troops and a British military intervention, had turned to mining.
The digging was completely illegal and most of the gemstones would be smuggled to neighbouring Liberia rather than go through the Sierra Leone government's books to (possibly) benefit the people of Sierra Leone.
The RUF miners were a law unto themselves; many of them, out of sight of the UN, had guns which they used to settle their arguments or press gang men into working for them.
The UN troops turned a blind eye to the smuggling because some of the rebels were co-operating with a disarmament programme - and, in any case, it would have been impossible for the thinly spread troops to stop the hordes of diggers.
Diamonds have always been at the heart of Sierra Leone's problems. Ever since the first commercial mines were opened by the British colonial authorities in 1931, they have been both the prize and the fuel in conflicts.
Sierra Leonean researcher and journalist Lansana Gberie argues in his new study of the war that diamonds gave the RUF insurgents both a motivation and a resource base to fight.
Mr Gberie's analysis centres on the criminalisation of the state, funded largely by diamonds, which began under long-time leader Siaka Stevens, in power from 1968 to 1985.
He argues that Stevens steadily undermined the institutions of state (the army, the courts, and social services like education and health care) by corruption, much of it through Lebanese intermediaries.
This, Mr Gberie says, meant the RUF had a relatively easy task in mounting its insurgency because there was little resistance from rotten state structures - including the army, which not only failed to stop the RUF but partly ended up joining them.
The insurgency was characterised by terror attacks on civilians, including the widespread hacking off of people's limbs.
This had the twin effect of making populations flee - so making looting easier - and terrifying others into submission.
In the end it was the UN - with backing from a British military intervention - which restored the elected government to Sierra Leone after war and coups had almost destroyed it.
Mr Gberie's thesis is not new, of course. But the detail he gives from his perspective as a Sierra Leonean journalist who has also worked as a researcher into the international diamond market, is probably unique.
He has worked for the organisation Partnership Africa Canada which lobbied effectively for Sierra Leone to fight against the trade in "conflict diamonds".
The brief history he gives of the British colonial state, for example, is particularly refreshing. Many Sierra Leoneans, exhausted and battered by the war, tend to idealise that history, presenting it as a peaceful idyll.
This tendency was exacerbated by the British military intervention in 2000 which stopped a probable coup by the much-feared RUF.
During the intervention it was common for people spontaneously to shout "God Bless The British," whenever they saw a squaddie sporting a Union Jack badge.
In fact, although the modern British action was extremely popular among Sierra Leoneans, the colonial idyll, if there was one, only really benefited a few tens of thousands of people in the colony of Freetown and its immediate environs.
Many of these were the descendants of African immigrants to the country who benefited from the higher education and decent services on offer in the capital.
Mr Gberie's study reminds us that the vast majority of Sierra Leoneans in the hinterland (or "The Protectorate") were not touched by the "civilising" power except when it came to foreign soldiers or policemen extracting hut tax from them.
The author also has some telling nuggets on the more recent dramatis personae in the Sierra Leone war.
It is often forgotten these days, for example, that Muammar Gaddafi, a man now courted by the West, was one of the creators of the chaos in West Africa in the 1990s.
The Libyan leader helped finance the early activities of a small group of "revolutionaries" including Charles Taylor, who became the president of Liberia, and the RUF leader Foday Sankoh.
The new study identifies the corruption and failures of the Sierra Leone army as one of the key elements that led to the collapse of the state in the 1990s and details its demise in admirable detail.
However, it would have been useful to know more about today's army, which has received considerable training and new equipment from Britain, and whether it has any more backbone.
One of the commanders of the British intervention force told me in 2000 his project was "to build the country back up, starting with the government army as the first building block".
I recall thinking, at the time, that this was a rather self-important thing for a soldier to say.
But I was wrong - Mr Gberie's study shows just how crucial an army, or the lack of a decent one, can be to the life of a nation.
What Sierra Leoneans want to know now is whether the new, British-trained army, is much better than the old one; would it resist any new insurgency and defend democracy or would it join the miners in Koidu?
One suspects that Lansana Gberies' contacts with politicians are rather better than his contacts with the military because this book does not really answer this crucial question - perhaps that should be the subject of his next study.
Nevertheless, this book is a valuable addition to the literature on the Sierra Leone war, written by a well-informed Sierra Leonean intellectual.
It details the collapse of a state through corrupt neglect and direct criminal activity.
It is a warning to many countries.
A Dirty War In West Africa - the RUF and the destruction of Sierra Leone by Lansana Gberie, Hurst and Company, London, 2005
Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/africa/4603382.stm
Published: 2006/01/12 12:29:59 GMT
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