US state dept. empowering #diamond miners or just securing resources - you decide!

A recent article by the US department of state talks about their "true impact and power" in the Central African Republic by supporting a program that is supposed to help artisanal diamond miners.

The program is called PRADD (Property Rights and Artisanal Diamond Development) It focuses on clarifying and securing the land tenure/property rights of individual miners as a means of making artisanal mining a meaningful economic activity, independent of pernicious relationships with traders further up the chain.

PRADD is funded by the US Government and managed by Tetratech ARD, a subsidiary of Tetratech.

Now what do we know about Tetratech?

It appears that many of the directors/presidents have/had ties with the CIA, US military, Nuclear energy lobby etc etc etc. Its all on their website..

Lets review some of their board members and executives:

Mr A.Smith, a former CIA official, vice president of Lockheed Martin, member of the Secretary of Defense Science board;

Mr J.Critchfield a “Powerful CIA operative who as a spymaster, soldier and diplomat was at the heart of a half century of historic moments, who did everything from recruiting former Third Reich members to spy on the Soviets, to supporting the political party that put Saddam Hussein in power." - yes we are quoting...

And some more:

Tetra Tech is a private research company and also a former subsidiary of Honeywell and in many occasions hired by the US military as a private research company. 
The company was hired to secure the area after the 9/11 attacks and their are numerous conspiracy sites linking it to the "alleged" (lets put that between brackets for arguments sake) 9/11 cover up.

Many directors in Tetra Tech hold ties to private held companies and investment firms.

JT:
Now how should we relate all this to their sudden interest in "helping" artisanal miners?
Is this program funded by the US Dept. of State or by Corporate Business (lets use Capitals)? 
Is this about helping artisanal miners or about securing resource?
Sure, ASM'ers now have property rights where none existed before but with what objectives?
They talk about "ring fencing" the rough diamond supply chain to prevent "blood diamonds" (that nonsense term again!) from entering the market.
How about ring fencing the arms trade instead of focusing on diamonds?!

WAKE UP

US DoS article:

Tetra Tech:

more links:

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