Who has seen Blood Diamond?

[XRchic]

We went and saw Blood Diamond last Saturday night. I had heard some good and some bad things about it before going in. I had especially heard that people did not like the ending.

I actually liked the movie, I found it thought provoking in a Hollywood kind of way and I didnt mind the ending. Overall, better than I expected.

Dinner at Jasmine (the best Indian restaurant in the country) and then the movie - not a bad night at all!

Anyone else seen it and have good or bad opinions?

Jac

[akira101]

Yeah I went to see it the other week. I thought it was great. A bit slow in some places, but on a whole a great film.

Made me think we've got it so good here in Oz

[vandrsxr6]

Loved it, one of the best movies of the year. Very full on though.

Ending dragged a little bit, but still very good.

A must see.

[merlin]

I had read reviews saying it was not so great and "preached" a lot - I did not find that at all. Really enjoyed it, loved DiCaprio's Afrikaan accent "my man", great film.

[csv8]

Blood Diamond and Apocalypto are my pic for the best films of the year. Cann't wait for Ghost Rider (Feb 15)

[Ford_Boy]

borat pic of the year

[EFDream]

I reckon it was pretty good and accurate. Having worked in africa with the UN I was a bit biased but overall it was the right balance between reality and fiction. All the african violence was pretty spot on judging from what I experienced over there. My 2 cents.

[XRchic]

Originally Posted by EFDream

I reckon it was pretty good and accurate. Having worked in africa with the UN I was a bit biased but overall it was the right balance between reality and fiction. All the african violence was pretty spot on judging from what I experienced over there. My 2 cents.

Thats interesting to know. Ive read a lot of Wilbur Smith (LOL yes, not quite the same as acutally having BEEN there and had the Africa experience) but Ive heard he is quite true to life in his books... I thought it pretty much tied in with the vibes that he has written about, although I dont think Smith has addressed those issues in the movie.

[LowEL2XR8]

Is there much action with Hind helicopter I saw in the previews?
I'm an action movie fan so its got to have some decent action for me to see it.

[DoreSlamR]

I haven't seen it yet, is it anything like Hotel Rwanda? it's based on a true story, very eye opening i reccomend it highly.

[EFDream]

Originally Posted by DoreSlamR

I haven't seen it yet, is it anything like Hotel Rwanda? it's based on a true story, very eye opening i reccomend it highly.

Definately eye opening but a little more ficticious than Hotel Rwanda IMO. Great movie tho

[MaD_KiWi]

Despite me hating Di Craprio, i loved Blood Diamond

[GasoLane]

Originally Posted by XRchic

We went and saw Blood Diamond last Saturday night.

I actually liked the movie,

It's a movie?... and I thought it was Neil Diamonds latest album :

[TEaaron]

Yeah I got the dvd

:

[XRated]

It's a pretty decent film. I didn't like Leonardo's inconsistent accent though - at one point I was wondering if he was meant to be an Aussie and then a New Zealander!

And XRchic, you're doing it the wrong way: it should be movie first, dinner last! That way you have something to look forward to and can relax and enjoy the film, and then discuss it over dinner :P

[XRchic]

Originally Posted by XRated

It's a pretty decent film. I didn't like Leonardo's inconsistent accent though - at one point I was wondering if he was meant to be an Aussie and then a New Zealander!

And XRchic, you're doing it the wrong way: it should be movie first, dinner last! That way you have something to look forward to and can relax and enjoy the film, and then discuss it over dinner :P

Yeah it was good, and I do agree with the accent thing though. But it would be a hard accent to do for that length of time...

Nah, its dinner, movie and drinks... hehe.

[XRated]

Originally Posted by XRchic

Nah, its dinner, movie and drinks... hehe.

Touche! :

[ef_classic]

Yeah i seen this the other day.

Awesome movie, leonardo dicaprio mastered the role.

The ending was the only down side, to predictable.

[XRchic]

Originally Posted by ef_classic

Yeah i seen this the other day.

Awesome movie, leonardo dicaprio mastered the role.

The ending was the only down side, to predictable.

Yeah I heard that before I saw it, but somehow I quite liked it. I like a bit of justice and how it ended was quite satisfying in a way. It sort of made the whole rest of it worthwhile, like why they struggled for that bloody diamond!!!

[rish]

i am from sth africa and my grandfather tells me its not far from the truth i thought it was a great movie. (there is know place like oz love it never leave it)

[BlueRaven]

I liked the movie, but I thought that the way they went about some things weren't the greatest. The story about the main characters lost its meaning when there was so much violence and hardship with all of the africans. I felt that I was supposed to care about the ending, but I was already numbed by then.

[XR6_661]

I went and saw it with my girlfriend (She is south african) and we both loved it.

Definatly the best movies of the new year so far. Can't wait for ghost rider though!!

[LTDHO]

I saw it and I was bored to tears.

I want my time back!!!

[XRchic]

Originally Posted by LTDHO

I saw it and I was bored to tears.

I want my time back!!!

I hope you didnt go see it because of this thread??? LOL!

[LTDHO]

Originally Posted by XRchic

I hope you didnt go see it because of this thread??? LOL!

Naaa, I saw it 'cause a friend had a copy, so it was free.

I had seen the ad's and I thought it would be great. But I learned this was not true.

It took me a while to work out Leo's accent! I thought it was NZ!!

[jonk]

Got this sent to me, quite interesting.


DAVID ICKE NEWSLETTER FEBRUARY 3RD 2007

THE DIAMOND CONSPIRACY ...



SPELT ... D.E.B.E.E.R.S ...

Hello all ...

There's been a lot of publicity in the last few weeks about a movie called Blood Diamond with Leonardo DiCaprio and it has triggered much debate about the selling of diamonds to finance wars in Africa.

The film highlights the trade in these blood or 'conflict diamonds' in Sierra Leone to fund the civil war there in the late 1990s and there has been a similar situation in Angola, Liberia, and the Congo, formerly Zaire. The Ivory Coast was implicated in exporting these diamonds for Liberia and Sierra Leone.

But hold on a second here. All that glitters is not gold and all that sparkles is not rare and valuable. Not without gross manipulation, anyway. There is a lot more to know about the diamond trade and the 'blood' variety are only part of the story. I am not defending the sale of diamonds to finance war, for I do not defend war itself whatever the source of funding. But I keep hearing about the 'illegal' and 'illicit' trade in diamonds in the wake of this movie when virtually the entire diamond industry is a corrupt and contemptible con.



Massive marketing campaigns over many decades have sold the myth that diamonds are rare and therefore must be expensive. This is a lie. Diamonds are crystals of carbon and they can be found in great quantities all over the world. They are produced by heat and pressure some 1,200 miles below ground and they have been brought to the surface by volcanoes to be mined, most famously in Africa. But they are found in extinct volcanoes throughout Asia, America, Russia and Australia, and along riverbeds and shorelines are the 'alluvial diamonds', as they are called. Everywhere there is carbon there are diamonds.

The number one fact to know about them is that they are not rare and therefore should be a fraction of the cost that people and industry pay for them. They are so expensive, not because they are rare, but because one family, controlled by another family, manipulates the market on a scale, and through methods, that beggar belief. Well, unless you understand the mentality of those involved, that is. Then it's not even a surprise. As Edward Epstein, author of The Rise and Fall of Diamonds, said:

'What I learned was that the diamond business wasn't a business of extracting, as I originally expected, something of enormous value and then simply seeing how much of this object you could get out of the ground and selling it. That was what the business appeared to be when I started my venture.

'But their real business was restricting what came out of the ground, restricting what was discovered, restricting what got cut, restricting what actually found its way into the retail market and, at the same time, through movies, through advertising, through Hollywood, through the manipulation of perceptions, creating the idea that there was this enormous demand for these shiny little objects that they seemed to have in abundant supply.

'So I wound up on this voyage of discovery starting off with the idea that there was this object of great value, and it was just a question of how many could you get out, and I wound up discovering it was just the opposite.'

The family that controls and callously manipulates the diamond trade is called Oppenheimer and the family that controls them is called Rothschild. Their vehicle is the name synonymous with diamonds ... De Beers.



It all began in Kimberley, South Africa, in 1871 when a huge quantity of diamonds was found. Before that they had indeed been rare in the sense that comparatively few had been brought to market, mostly from India and Brazil. According to the records of the British East India Company, Jewish traders controlled virtually the entire world diamond traffic by the end of the eighteenth century. The Brazilian fields, however, were almost depleted of diamonds, and no more diamonds were coming out of India. But the find at Kimberly changed all that and the infamous Rothschild agent, Cecil Rhodes, seized the opportunity. His biggest coup was to pay £6,000 to a farmer called De Beer for his diamond-rich land and Rhodes set about bringing together all claim holders in the area into his company, which he called De Beers Consolidated Mines, formed in 1888. It was nothing short of a diamond cartel.

Then, in 1914, along came a German-born diamond dealer called Ernest Oppenheimer who discovered enormous qualities of diamonds in what was then called German South West Africa, now Namibia. It was the biggest diamond mine in history at that time and so abundant that black people were deployed with a tin can around their necks to simply go around on hands and knees and pick them up. Oppenheimer secured control of the land, but his report on the find was kept hidden from the public to keep secret the number of diamonds available. He called his company the Anglo American Corporation because of his investors in England (primarily the Rothschilds) and in America (the J.P. Morgan operation controlled by the Rothschilds).



In the 1920s Oppenheimer, supported by the Rothschilds, made his move on De Beers. He told them that if they did not make him chairman of the company he would flood the market with diamonds and crash the price. He became chairman in 1929 and the takeover of the global diamond trade was complete. It wasn't even truly a cartel because it was controlled by one family, the Oppenheimers, fronting for another, the Rothschilds. De Beers was owned by Anglo American and, through creative bookkeeping and management, Anglo American was owned by De Beers.

With diamonds so common throughout the world the entire trade is based on convincing people they are rare. To do this has involved indoctrination of the public, especially through television and Hollywood, and ensuring that the number of diamonds cut and available for sale is strictly limited. Marketing consultant Herbert Chao Gunther, said:

'Nobody's aware that diamonds and all the associations we have with diamonds is a product of a marketing strategy. It's completely invisible, transparent. If you measure it in terms of how all the myths associated with this advertising campaign have been deeply inculcated in people -- it's reached deeply into the popular imagination -- this is probably the most successful campaign in history.'

The Oppenheimers opened a Hollywood office that gave diamonds to film producers who would promote them in their movies. The aim was to associate diamonds as a token of true love and something that is given by the man as a surprise (so the woman is not in on the decision and chooses something else). Claudette Colbert and Merle Oberon were given special scenes to show off their De Beers diamonds and the film Diamonds Are Dangerous was retitled Adventure in Diamonds to suit the De Beers campaign. The song Diamonds Are a Girl's Best Friend, performed by Marilyn Monroe in the 1953 film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, has been listed as the 12th most important movie song of all time. Jane Russell sang it in the same film and it has been endlessly performed by others since, including Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge in 2001.



The Oppenheimers also came to an arrangement with the British Royal Family to wear their diamonds at the expense of other gems and the whole marketing campaign peddled the blatant untruth that diamonds were rare and thus had to be expensive. Gifts to the already filthy rich Windsors included caskets embossed with coronets that contained a six-carat stone for Princess Elizabeth and a four-and-a-half-carat diamond for Princess Margaret.

Another De Beers marketing strategy was to say 'a diamond is forever' and should not be resold. This was designed to suppress the market in second hand diamonds to protect the price of the new ones. These guys don't miss a trick.



But selling the lie to the public is only one part of the Oppenheimer/De Beers strategy. They also have to stop the market being flooded with all the diamonds that really exist, in fact and potentially. This they have done coldly and ruthlessly. Fewer than 200 merchants are allowed to buy from De Beers. These are the so-called 'sightholders' who can hold and see the rough diamonds that De Beers is prepared to market from its headquarters at 17 Charterhouse Street in East London. Everyone else must buy from the sightholder.

Through this system De Beers controls how many diamonds are released for sale and this is vital to stop their scam collapsing. They distribute to the cutters what is in short supply on the market and horde what is abundant, a technique that fixes the price through supply and demand and keeps it artificially high. The sightholders can make requests for what they want, but De Beers decides if they get it. One of them, William Goldberg, said: 'I've been very angry and cussed a lot and been very upset, but that's - that's how the cookie crumbles. I have no - I have no options ...'



The Oppenheimers are constantly targeting new supplies of diamonds that they don't control and, big or small, their owners are bought out or threatened with consequences. Fouad Kamil, a former 'diamond detective' with the Anglo-American Corporation, said that competition did not suit his former employers. 'They wanted the whole plate for themselves', he said and this involved violence and intimidation against those operating outside the cartel:

'Diamonds going out of Sierra Leone and other African diamond markets were going to what Anglo American described as black markets, that is, Antwerp, Amsterdam, Germany, some parts of the United States and Israel. Now, these people were labelled black markets by Anglo American, but in their own countries, they were respectable diamond dealers.

'... those that had diamonds, I took them as prisoners. I interrogated them, got the information from them. I kept them as long as I wanted, week to week, some of them months, and released them when I wanted. There was beatings. There was punishments without food. We did everything we could to extort the information from them. There was a stage when no one dared to pass from there, diamonds or no diamonds. So to put it bluntly, we were a terrorist group. That's what it amounts to.'

Where 'alluvial diamonds' were being found washed up on riverbanks, De Beers sent out Oxford graduates into the jungle to buy them in the local currency, anything to stop them getting on the market. The Oppenheimers also secured their monopoly by doing deals with the colonial powers and, after 'independence', with the corrupt African leaders installed by the colonial powers. Those who were critical of the colonial mining system, like the Congo's first democratically elected leader, Patrice Lumumba, ended up dead in a coup backed by the CIA. The intelligence agency network connects with the transnational corporations like Anglo American and De Beers through the bloodline secret society nexus.

Others like Mobutu Sese Seko, the dictator when the Congo became Zaire, accrued immense riches after selling out his people to De Beers. A deal was struck by a De Beers middleman, an American called Maurice Tempelsman, as revealed in some declassified documents from the U.S. State Department. Tempelsman met with the State Department, the U.S. Embassy in Kinshasa, Mobutu and De Beers and what emerged was an exclusive contract for all Zaire's diamonds to be shipped to De Beers in London.



Mobutu and wife ...soul sellers

At least most of the coups, wars and slaughter in Africa have been manipulated by the Illuminati cartels to direct power and events for their own benefit and there is an endless supply of 'Mobutus' to help them in return for a substantial commission. On one occasion the secretary of Mobutu's wife was found at an airport to be carrying diamonds worth $6 million. Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe is a perfect example today of the depth of sickness available for exploitation by these global corporations. Edward Epstein, author of The Rise and Fall of Diamonds, said of De Beers:

'Each time diamonds are found in an inconvenient place, they begin, the diamond cartel, through intermediaries, through law firms they hire, ways to think, how can we prevent these diamonds from reaching the market? And declaring something a national park, tying things up in litigation -- these are just the methods and there's an infinite number of different methods you could use, once you understand what the objective is. The objective is to prevent mines from being developed that are outside their control.'

According to Justice Department records, America's only diamond mine, at Murfreesboro in south west Arkansas, was closed after J.P. Morgan and Sir Ernest Oppenheimer from Anglo American/De Beers met with Sam Rayburn and other principals of the Arkansas Diamond Corporation. The mine has never reopened even though geological surveys showed it had great promise.



Even during the Second World War, the Oppenheimers would not release industrial diamonds for use in the American war effort until a deal was struck to ensure that De Beers controlled them at all times and they could not be sold when the conflict was over. Even then, it was later established that De Beers had overcharged the Americans for this supply while running an advertising campaign in the United States urging people to buy De Beer gems because they paid for the industrial diamonds that America needed to win the war. These characters simply have no shame.

But when it came to the Nazis there seemed to be no problem. They were being supplied with industrial diamonds 'smuggled' from an Oppenheimer-controlled mine in the Congo. One method was to load Belgian Red Cross parcels with the diamonds and send them to Nazi-occupied Belgium via Switzerland. The allies knew that without the Congo stones, Hitler would run out within eight months, but the Oppenheimers refused to do anything to stop this supply and a U.S. intelligence investigation into their actions was mysteriously terminated before its conclusion.

In the 1950s when diamonds were found in Siberia that threatened the cartel's control, De Beers could not directly do business with the Soviet Union. So they simply set up a separate operation owned by a U.K. merchant bank across the street from their offices and the Russian diamonds quietly found their way into the De Beers central selling system. Harry Oppenheimer's son-in-law was seen at the Bolshoi Ballet in Moscow when, given that he came from apartheid South Africa, he could not have had an entry visa. But all that stuff is for the people, not the elite.



A massive diamond find at the Ashton mine in Australia in 1979 was met with the usual Oppenheimer ruthlessness. They threatened to reduce diamond prices in the categories of stones the new mine would produce while at the same time the Oppenheimers bought stock in key Australian companies. Australian journalists were invited to South Africa, sponsored by De Beers, to promote the company and the pathetic Australian media began to support a De Beers takeover of the Ashton project. In the end, the cartel won and the Australian diamonds headed for the De Beers central selling system in London. Corporate Investigator Thomas Helsby said:

'The De Beers operation is essentially the control of the production of diamonds. They control the chain of supply of diamonds and that's the way in which they control the diamond market. If somebody were to try to go around the cartel, the concern that they would have to have is how long it would last, because of course, De Beers, in the past, has been very successful at bringing all the producers into the cartel.'

The Oppenheimers are so arrogant about their power and use such intimidation that when the U.S. Justice Department tried to serve an anti-trust notice on De Beers it took a long time to find a South African lawyer who would hand it over. When one eventually did a De Beers representative ripped the paper into shreds, stamped on it and then basically threw the guy out.

So the scandal of diamonds is far from confined to the 'blood diamonds' highlighted in the DiCaprio movie. In fact, keeping such diamonds off the market would suit the aims of the De Beers cartel in suppressing all sales that it doesn't control - unless, of course, it is making money out of them.

Down in Kimberley, the home of Harry Oppenheimer House, the main De Beers diamond sorting centre in southern Africa, some strange events were reported from around 2002. The diamond reserves in the area are supposed to be virtually worked out, but suddenly there was a renaissance. From a few carats a month, diggers began arriving with what was described as 'a small mine's production'. This made no sense and officials from the South African government diamond valuator (a company appointed by the government to value and monitor diamond exports) said they suspected that diamonds from countries to the north were being laundered through the small mining operations around Kimberley and sold through the De Beers sorting centre.

The conclusion is highly credible and if that is what has been going on the De Beers cartel would certainly know about it - but be sure they won't be telling anyone else.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Ten Reasons Why You Should Never Accept a Diamond Ring

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 associated 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 passed 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.

Source: http://www.fguide.org/Bulletin/conflictdiamonds.htm

[jimt3te50]

we went and saw it last week and loved it- the accent is bloody hard to do and though inconsistent in some spots, pulled off very well

I think he has become a very good and entertaining actor- never really been acknowledged for some of the great movies he has made..........

Certainly getting better as he's getting older in my book

[MITCHAY]

Probably should have gone to see this instead of Epic Movie. That movie was lame.

[Noddy]

I saw it when it opened, thought it was a great movie. Easily the best I’ve seen in the last couple of years. (I rarely go to the movies I'd rather watch them at home) As has already been mentioned it was thought provoking, did a double take walking past Michael Hill jewelers.

[jimt3te50]

Originally Posted by Noddy

I saw it when it opened, thought it was a great movie. Easily the best I’ve seen in the last couple of years. (I rarely go to the movies I'd rather watch them at home) As has already been mentioned it was thought provoking, did a double take walking past Michael Hill jewelers.

Agree with everything there Matt

And the fiancee asked me about her engagement ring too......