Word: conflict
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During an on-set interview, Zwick is quick to emphasize that "first and foremost, this is intended to be an entertaining and dramatic movie." At the same time, the man behind thirtysomething and The Last Samurai takes a storyteller's pleasure in his exploration of Sierra Leone's bloody conflict, which ended in 2002, and the way illegal diamond mining fueled that war. "The issues it evokes are universal, both personally and politically. You can't tell a story about Sierra Leone without thinking about child soldiers. You can't tell a story about Sierra Leone without thinking about refugees...
...careful about the film. The World Diamond Council (W.D.C.) hired crisis p.r. firm Sitrick & Co. to coordinate a reported $15 million campaign to counter the movie's message. Full-page newspaper advertisements detailed the measures diamond producers have taken to end the flow of conflict diamonds. An industry website, diamondfacts.org sprang up, retailers were encouraged to educate themselves about the issue, and Zwick was pushed to tout the complete success of the Kimberley Process, a diamond-policing mechanism instituted in 2002 (see sidebar), in the script. He declined...
Since Kimberley was created, the industry says, 99.8% of diamonds are conflict free. Activists say that the situation is better but that diamonds are the cause of continuing misery. Two weeks ago, when Kimberley Process members sat down to their annual plenary meeting in Botswana to discuss how the watchdog system was working, the pressure for tighter oversight had ratcheted up. Responding to a U.N. report that poor controls are allowing conflict diamonds from war-torn Ivory Coast to enter the legitimate trade through neighboring Ghana, where they are being certified as conflict free, the diamond industry agreed not only...
...folks say the decision had nothing to do with Blood Diamond. "The movie had no impact on the deliberations and outcome of the recent Kimberley Process Plenary," says W.D.C. spokesman Carson Glover. "The diamond industry began confronting the problem of conflict diamonds long before Hollywood was aware of it and will be focused on it long after Hollywood loses interest." Activists, though, say the W.D.C. was much more proactive at this Kimberley Process meeting than in the past. "I think that the upcoming film must have had an impact on their moves to support calls to strengthen the Kimberley Process...
Addressing a packed forum, Abizaid, who spoke without a script and sat throughout his talk, said the rise of Islamic extremism and the Arab-Israeli conflict were the major obstacles facing the region...