The Battle For Greenland's Rubies

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

10-03-2008 @ 9:06PM

Naoko Emi said...

I see in Marc Choyt's article that Mr. Madson was accused by the police of ruby smuggling. I had a search on the internet and found that there was an article in the Greenland news about an American being arrested at the airport for ruby smuggling. It was less than two weeks before Mr. Madson's arrest. Maybe that has something to do with why the government was so sensitive about this.

http://www.sikunews.com/art.html?catid=6&artid=3593

When you think of it, Greenland has free medical care, education, and many other benefits. It is not a poor country where people are desparate. How can they pay for all these expensive things if people are avoiding paying taxes on rubies or smuggling rubies? I think it is a lot more ethical to have a small company like True North Gems mine these rubies using local people, and share the tax money with the government, rather than have anyone come in and take what they want. In Columbia, people are routinely killed fighting over emeralds. Having a safe, enclosed mining operation that pays taxes sounds like a far more reasonable and ethical solution. This True North Gems sounds very ethical too.

Add your comments

Your comments:

Remember me

E-Mail me when someone replies to this comment

Please keep your comments relevant to this blog entry. Email addresses are never displayed, but they are required to confirm your comments.

When you enter your name and email address, you'll be sent a link to confirm your comment, and a password. To leave another comment, just use that password.

To create a live link, simply type the URL (including http://) or email address and we will make it a live link for you. You can put up to 3 URLs in your comments. Line breaks and paragraphs are automatically converted — no need to use <p> or <br /> tags.

Join Luxist on Facebook!

Luxist bloggers (30 days)

#	Blogger	Posts	Cmts
1	Deidre Woollard	192	0
2	Ariel Adams	55	0
3	Jared Paul Stern	49	0
4	Annie Scott	40	1
5	Carrie Coolidge	38	0
6	Rigel Celeste	34	0
7	Noah Joseph	26	0
8	Jonathon Ramsey	25	0
9	Tom Johansmeyer	22	0
10	Lisa Palladino	20	0
11	Ariston Anderson	14	0
12	Deb West	14	0
13	Jeremy Korzeniewski	11	0
14	Alison Wellner	7	0
15	Carrie N. Culpepper	6	0
16	Marsha Reid	6	0
17	Brendan Cleary	5	0
18	Kristin Young	5	0
19	Sam Abuelsamid	3	0
20	Ann Brenoff	2	0