Glitter Greed The Secret Worl

Farrell-Robert, Janine

ISBN 10: 1932857605 / ISBN 13: 9781932857603

Editore: Disinformation Books, 2007

Item in very good condition! Textbooks may not include supplemental items i.e. CDs, access codes etc. Codice articolo 00077094987

Riassunto:

Rare, romantic, and forever: The diamond industry depends on these myths to reap billions of dollars of profit. This sensational investigation explodes such fallacies and reveals how multimilliondollar advertising campaigns create the impression of rarity and romance. It reveals a very secret and unromantic world, one that is dominated and controlled by a handful of mighty corporations.

With Leonardo DiCaprio's movie The Blood Diamond making more people than ever aware of the seamy side of the diamond trade, Janine Roberts' explosive exposé, taking us through seven decades of intrigue and manipulation, is the right book at the right time.

Estratto. © Ristampato con autorizzazione. Tutti i diritti riservati.:

GLITTER & GREED

The Secret World of the Diamond Cartel

By Janine Roberts

Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC

Copyright © 2007 Janine Roberts
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-932857-60-3

Contents

Preface, 
Foreword The Real Blood Diamonds, 
Introduction Blood Diamonds and Terrorists: An Overview, 
Chapter 1 The Diamond Hunt, 
Chapter 2 In Bondage - The Child and Adult Cutters of India, 
Chapter 3 Diamonds and Tribal Rights, 
Chapter 4 How Diamonds Were Made Rare, 
Chapter 5 How the Only US Diamond Mine Was Sabotaged, 
Chapter 6 Rationing the United States, 
Chapter 7 Diamonds for Hitler, 
Chapter 8 Selling the Diamond Myth, 
Chapter 9 The Forging of Diamonds, 
Chapter 10 Selling Conflict Diamonds to the White House, 
Chapter 11 The Most Powerful of Diamond Merchants, 
Chapter 12 The Secret Movement Of Diamonds, 
Chapter 13 Conflict Diamonds and the Diamond Wars, 
Chapter 14 The Secrets of The World's Most Prolific Diamond Mine; and Lessons from Fraud in Sierra Leone, 
Chapter 15 The Diamonds of the Frozen North, 
Chapter 16 The Diamond Heartland of De Beers, 
Chapter 17 Defending the Crown, 
Chapter 18 The Future of the Diamond Trade, 
Epilogue Dangers of the Hunt: The Making of The Diamond Empire and of this book, 
Glossary, 
Bibliography, 
Appendix The Clean Diamond Trade Act, 
Index, 
About the Author, 

CHAPTER 1

The Diamond Hunt

My investigations started quite innocently. I had been invited to explain thetechniques of diamond mining to Aboriginal elders in a small settlement calledOombulgurri in northwest Australia. They told me of their alarm at the manyprospectors in helicopters and four-wheel drives invading their lands. Theelders and I sat in fine red dust in the shade of a fat-trunked boab tree. Itwas sultry, pre-monsoonal. As we talked, apart from the distant shouts ofplaying children, the only other sounds were the occasional buzz of flies or aparrot's staccato screech.

I did not need to introduce these elders to diamonds. Whites first founddiamonds in this region some decades ago when they examined the sacred stonescarried in a pouch by a murdered Aborigine. What Aborigines now wanted from me,a sociologist with strong friendships within their community, was factualinformation on the consequences of a major diamond find by a major diamondcompany.

Six months or so earlier the Oombulgurri community had bravely denied an entrypermit to Stockdale, De Beers' diamond exploration company, because they fearedit might trespass in sacred areas. They had heard that mining companies had evenplundered burial caves.

Their refusal had so angered the state government that it had removed from allAboriginal communities in Western Australia the right to issue permits tovisitors. Thus, the Oombulgurri community could not give an official permit whenit invited me to visit them.

I had come to see them nonetheless, for they had invited me and I could see nogood reason to refuse. The local legal service advised that taking away theirright to invite guests was a denial of civil rights. There was seemingly littlerisk. The local police had never arrested anyone for accepting an Aboriginalinvitation.

But perhaps I was being somewhat naïve. My conversation with the elders was sooninterrupted by a schoolteacher with a radio message from Melbourne, over 3,500miles away. The Federal Authorities had ordered the police to fly in byhelicopter to arrest me! I was open-mouthed with astonishment. This seemed soover the top, so extraordinary that I could scarcely believe it. It was thenthat I realized that I had fallen by chance into the midst of a quiet warbetween diamond prospectors, the government and the tribes.

I did not wait for the police to arrive, but hired the community's boat totravel back to the slaughterhouse town of Wyndham. I hoped this would protect myhosts from being harassed by the police. The mission boat was small - apparentlylarger crocodiles frolicked just up stream from us. But we made it away, throughthe tangled mangrove roots, across the shark infested estuary, over sedimentsnow believed by some to be rich in diamonds, safely to Wyndham. The quayside wasquiet when we arrived, the dust-blown streets deserted before the oncomingmonsoonal storm. We made our way back to the home of the local district nursewhere we were staying. After dinner the police came around to arrest us.

I found out later that the police had been unwilling to arrest us but had beenordered into action. I wondered why, then discovered that CRA Limited wasconcealing a massive diamond find nearby. It had secured over one hundred squaremiles, surrounding its find behind high fences, security guards and closedcircuit television. I was then smuggled inside it by an Aboriginal group thathad been given permission to hunt their tribal lands included within the lease.My face was dirty, my hair concealed beneath a scarf. The security guardsignored me, probably thinking me a half-caste. They did not see the camera onwhich I sat as we drove into the heart of a secret diamond find within the redand mauve slopes of an extinct volcano. It contained, according to secretgeological reports later leaked to me, more diamonds than South Africaofficially had.

In Melbourne a small Australian company later showed me a highly confidentialthree-dimensional model revealing the drill results from this diamond deposit.It told me that it contained over 20 times the diamond concentration per tonnethan there were in De Beers' South African mines. I also learned that over halfof its diamonds were of gem quality. My articles about this discovery ran fullpage in major newspapers and were nationally syndicated.

By now, small Australian mining firms were cheering me on - but not because ofmy work for Aborigines. They did not want to see Australian resources going intoforeign hands. Their executives and geologists fed me information.

My articles may have educated, even entertained, but politically they failed. DeBeers mounted Ernest Oppenheimer's "spring offensive." He has since boasted ofthis. Australian mining investors were feted. It did not take long for him tosecure control over the marketing of these Australian diamonds.

I then discovered that the US Justice Department had pursued De Beers' diamondcartel for half a century, accusing it of greatly exploiting the Americanconsumer. I obtained Justice Department files under the US Freedom ofInformation Act. Thousands of pages came to Australia. I now had FBI andAmerican spy reports, intercepted letters and a hundred leads.

This investigation eventually took me around the world. I made a feature-lengthfilm called The Diamond Empire shown on American and British television and tookit to South Africa, where I found the diamond mineworkers hungry for informationabout their employer, De Beers. They secretly showed our film inside its mines.I was invited to speak to up to 700 miners at a time, for up to three hours asession, and I found shameful and dangerous conditions still existed insidethese mines, despite apartheid having ended. Yet, they were producing the mostlucrative of stones worth many times more than gold; stones that today are soldas "clean."

Everywhere I found blood on the diamond crystal. Its shame was not just on themargins of the diamond empire but in its very heart.

The crown of shame

The figures appeared shadowy; children darting from the darkness to vanish fromthe flickering light of my headlights as I hesitatingly drove over unmade roadsthrough the dust storm enveloping the seemingly endless shantytown. The dust hada peculiar gritty feel. It crusted my lips, irritating them. I was in Kimberley,the town that gave birth to De Beers and the modern diamond trade. The dust onmy lips was kimberlite, the ore from which diamonds are extracted.

It swirled unhindered through razor wire from acres of gray waste tips, frommines dug into Kimberley's heart, clouding the air as it had for a century. ButI hoped there would be a change, elation in the step of the black Africans thedust enshrouded. It was then 1994. South Africa was free. For the first timethey were living in a democracy. When I asked for the diamond mineworkers on myarrival in Kimberley, I was misdirected to a two-storied iron roofed and ironlaced building. It was the De Beers headquarters. The amused security guardpointed out the way to the nearby union office. Here diamond miners wereawaiting me. Much had now changed. A former diamond mineworker was now thePremier in Kimberley.

I was taken to speak with miners in a De Beers hostel by a diamond mine inbarbed wire encased wastelands. Afterwards they took me to the home of amineworker in a Township where I was to stay, across the road from a diamondmine's waste treatment plant. On the way my host showed me the squatter campswhere thousands lived in tiny shanties of corrugated iron. I thus met the peoplewho had won De Beers its fortune.

Nothing I had read prepared me for this sea of squatter camps that stretched tothe horizon. The city of diamonds on which the De Beers fortune was founded, themines that gave Cecil Rhodes the funds needed to expand the British Empirethroughout East Africa, was still surrounded by dire poverty.

Near the diamond waste reprocessing plant I came across a vast graveyardevidently reserved for blacks only. Many graves were marked only by heaps ofrough rocks. Many were freshly dug. Sometimes the rock heaps were covered by thesigns of grief of the extremely poor: a cracked jug, an old teapot, broken cups.From the graves' size, many were of children. Some had black tombstones. Othershad the name of the dead scratched on pieces of metal. Many were nameless. Thewall around the graveyard was cheaply erected out of rough rocks withoutmunicipal help. Not far away, on the city side of the blacks' township, was thelarge white graveyard, with neat graves spaced out in wide lawns. The fencearound it was high and robust. Apartheid affected even the dead.

I had come to see how De Beers was doing in post-apartheid Africa. When Iarrived in Johannesburg from London, the National Union of Mineworkers by afortunate coincidence was about to hold a conference for shop stewards from DeBeers' diamond mines. They planned to show my film, The Diamond Empire. Theywere surprised and delighted when I turned up just at the right moment andoffered to talk about what we had learned while making this film. After myaddress I was enthusiastically invited to all the diamond mines.

Kimberley - De Beers' heartland

Three days later I hired a car and set out to Kimberley, some five hours drivefrom Johannesburg. Every town I passed had a sister town of hovels. A constantstream of black servants walked along dirt paths from one to the other, some incleanly pressed uniforms, some in gardening or garage overalls.

I found the townships around Kimberley to be separated by overgrown heaps ofblue rock, the remains of diamond mines. Excavators and bulldozers moved throughthe haze busily reprocessing the waste to check for any diamonds missed earlier.De Beers had sold this waste to licensed contractors at so much a truckload.They had to sell any diamonds found back to De Beers - the only permitted buyer.I stopped by a gate to talk to some black women. They were waiting to make suretheir men did not waste their pay. One De Beers' truck driver told me his takehome pay for a 50 hour week Was R96 - about $28. A senior government officialtold how they had asked De Beers to contract unemployed black workers to searchthese waste tips. The answer was no, it would encourage "illicit diamond buying"(IDB) and that blacks would gather like "vultures" (De Beers' word) to searchfor diamonds. Instead De Beers had sold these waste tips to Canadian diamondenthusiasts.

In South Africa the law prohibiting IDB stipulated that any rough uncut diamondfound on public land must be sold to the government who then resold it to DeBeers. Africans gasped with amazement when I told them how I had seen diamondsopenly traded on the street in Mumbai (formerly known as Bombay) and New York.For them to do so would mean jail. Despite this, I learned there was a highlysecretive local black diamond market in Kimberley run by men who hated De Beersfor its mean wages and treatment of workers.

Over the next days the miners drove me along coundess miles of potholed androck-strewn dirt roads lined with shacks, showing me inside the more substantialhomes and not showing me the poorer ones for fear of shaming their owners.Despite their poverty, these residents were house-proud. The owners of thepoorest homes took time every day to remove the dust from steps and windowsills.

The bare earth surrounding the hovels was raked daily and attempts were made atgardens. In the evening, their windows were lit by weak electric lights or byflickering flames, as many could not afford electricity. Power bills couldeasily amount to $90 a month, the entire income of a worker on the diamonddumps.

In the Kimberley Mines Division of De Beers there were between 1,200 and 1,400workers of which 1,100 were black. Most lived in the townships and squattercamps. A senior government official in Kimberley told me they had approached DeBeers for financial help to rebuild these homes in the name of theReconstruction and Development Program (RDP) of the new ANC government ofNational Reconciliation. De Beers replied they had given their annual 120,000Rand ($30,000) from their Chairman's Fund and could give no more. I also visitedthe suburbs constructed for white miners and managers. These had names such as"De Beers" and "Ernestville" and streets named after Ernest Oppenheimer. Thehomes were spacious and green with lawns; the only inadequacy were in the"maid's quarters." These were not large enough to house the numbers of servantsemployed. Thus early every morning I saw crowds of black women servants walkingin over dusty paths from the townships and taxi stands.

The major tourist attraction in Kimberley was the "Big Hole," a vast crater ofterraced sides descending to cliffs above an extremely deep lake - a diamondmine abandoned not because it had run out of diamonds but because it wasendangering the stability of the town center. The dusty tips it creates arescattered throughout the town. The miners took me to another big hole on theoutskirts of the city, disused and dangerously ill-protected, and showed me howthe debris of diamond mining surrounded Kimberley. The museum at the Big Holetold of the exploits of the white prospectors, of the first miners, of CecilRhodes and the siege of Kimberley when guns, ammunition and an armored trainwere manufactured in De Beers' workshops as Boers and English fought for thediamond mines. But I saw no mention of the thousands of black miners whose laborbuilt the mines or of the important role played by Kimberley's diamond bosses indeveloping apartheid.

The role of De Beers in the creation of apartheid

Up until the discovery of diamonds in South Africa in the 1870s, most SouthernAfrican nations or "tribes" were economically independent of the white settlers.They supplied the first miners with meat from their cattle herds and withfarming products. These black nations at first controlled the alluvial diamondfields by the Orange River, traded in diamonds and restricted the whiteprospectors' use of mining equipment. When the large diamond deposits ofKimberley were found on the dry plateau to the east of the river, the Africansworked these deposits for white prospectors to acquire such goods as guns. Whenthey had the funds required they would quit and return to their farms.

As the diamond diggings got deeper, the small mine companies became more andmore dependent on black labor to remove the ore, break it up and to remake theroads that were always collapsing into the diggings. The wages paid to the blackminers made up three quarters of the costs of the white owners. In July 1876 theowners tried to slash wages in half. The result was devastating. 4,000 blackminers stopped work and went home. They did not return until wages were restoredto their former level. As the Africans traditionally lived by barter, they didnot require cash to survive. This gave the mine bosses little control over them.

Then taxes were imposed on the Africans in order to make them dependent on acash income that could only be obtained by working for whites. This forced theAfricans to leave their farms for the mines. Soon touts were auctioning blackworkers in the Market Square in Kimberley as if they were slaves. The touts tooka fee equal to four months' miner's wages. The employers did not like thissystem for it increased their costs.

The mine owners were also concerned about the numbers of employees whosupplemented their wages by retaining diamonds. Many workers, both white andblack, saw little wrong in keeping a proportion of their finds. Some ownersestimated that 30 to 40 percent of the stones found were going into this illegaldistribution system. In 1883 a new law was passed allowing the mine owners tosearch all employees daily, white and black. Black employees (but not whites)had to wear mealie flour sacks at work so they had no pockets in which theycould hide diamonds. In April 1884 white workers who refused to be searched weresacked by the Kimberley mines. Black workers then came out on strike insympathy. The strike was put down by force, killing sue white miners. Shortlyafter this the daily searching of white employees was dropped.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from GLITTER & GREED by Janine Roberts. Copyright © 2007 Janine Roberts. Excerpted by permission of Red Wheel/Weiser, LLC.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Dati bibliografici

Titolo: Glitter Greed The Secret Worl
Casa editrice: Disinformation Books
Data di pubblicazione: 2007
Legatura: Brossura
Condizione: Good