Dear Straight Dope Subscribers.
I’m academic student doing a research project on the present day conflict between diamonds and its surrounding problems! I wanted to write to you to find out your straight dope on the matter. If you had to point me to a place of interest, or even just two or three paragraphs of your intelligence that would be kind to me.
Sincerely.Kind of confused by this. Do you have a specific question you are interested in?
I just typed in “conflict diamonds” in Proquest and got a ton of good articles. You should have access to academic journals through your institution.
So as a research student (assuming post-grad college) you lack the ability to do said research yourself? In my day we actually had to get out of bed, get dressed and go to the library.
Don’t strain your finger with this mouse click.
Don’t we have a specific policy against doing people’s homework for them?
Well i didn’t think google was a place of interest to most straight dope members, as for three to four paragraphs of intelligence i didn’t see that either. I’m thinking its easy to hate on somebody new, but ill throw a topic up. “Diamonds structure of sale, Transports, and illegal smuggling to present day.”
I’m not trying to be snarky, but does phrase make sense?
I’m sure Scotland has English as a second language students too, and this may be the case here.
On the other hand we could have a high schooler wanting his homework done (okay, now I’m being a little snarky.)
Hi
I’m sure others will be along in a bit with more information, but we really can’t give you good solid thoughts without having to do research ourselves and finding citations to back them up.
We can perhaps give opinions, but those are just that…opinions. They aren’t necessarily supported by facts and anything we say here certainly can’t be used in a research paper that you might write (simply because its anonymous internet conjecture)
So if you want good facts to use in a research paper and are asking us for those facts we will be pretty hesitant. The collective We, in general, don’t have any motivation to look those facts up for you.
You might get lucky and find someone here who is an expert in your topic. They can give you a general overview and might point you in some directions where you can get more information and use as real references. But what they say really can’t be used in a research paper, even if they are truly experts.
P.S. Please try to ignore or at least understand the sarcasm/grumpy feelings. We’ve been here before. Its not too uncommon for a student to come here and essentially ask us to write an essay or research paper (or give them ALL the POSSIBLE information on some topic). Requests like that come off as a bit rude and it happens often enough that we specifically have rules against asking to do homework problems (though they sometimes generate some interest)
I’m from Nova Scotia, if you could read and write appropriate, then please use your brain to maybe paraphrase some intelligence and post it here, thank you.
Start with understanding the Kimberley Process, and theUN Resolutions that kickstarted it.
Here’s a monograph from the Institute for Security Studies, on Sierra Leone and peacekeeping. A chapter deals with the diamond trade. A chapterfrom another monograph from them, on a similar subject. Scroll to the bottom of Page 127 within the document for another discussion of the diamond trade. Yet another chapter. I’m primarily linking these because their internal cites might serve as a guide for further research, not because I fully believe they speak the truth about the ‘conflict diamond’ trade in Africa.
That should get you started.
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