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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dan B. who wrote (12800)	10/17/2003 9:04:42 PM
From: LindyBill	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 793601

Diamonds are a Girl's best friend It is amazing that they have been able to keep this artificial scarcity up after all these years. ________________________________________ BOOK REVIEW Diamonds are De Beers's, not a girl's, best friend By Rich Barlow, Globe Correspondent, 10/12/2003 Glitter & Greed: The Secret World of the Diamond Empire, By Janine Roberts, The Disinformation Co., 374 pp., $22.95. Brides-to-be hoping for a diamond engagement ring are advised to keep "Glitter & Greed" out of their fiances' hands. According to the book, every excuse for diamonds' exorbitant expense is bunk. They are not scarce, and in most cases their retail prices far outstrip the cost of producing them. Janine Roberts quotes a spokesman for De Beers, the South African industry goliath, as arguing that prices reflect the cost of paying highly skilled diamond polishers. That was before diamond workers in India, where the vast majority of polishing is done, rioted to protest pay of 20 cents per stone. Gouging consumers is the lightest accusation that's been leveled against the diamond cartel over the years. In the 1920s, the US government tried and failed to prove that De Beers's future chairman had illegally influenced the closing of America's only diamond mine, in Arkansas. The Justice Department looked into alleged profiteering by the firm during World War II. Activists have long condemned industry working conditions. De Beers rejects that criticism, as it is made in this book and in the 1994 documentary, "The Diamond Empire," broadcast by the BBC and PBS. Roberts writes she produced the film but her name was omitted from the credits after wrangling between the BBC and De Beers, which considered her biased. Her publisher produced a copy of a contract with WGBH identifying her as executive producer; WGBH had no immediate comment. Almost everyone agrees that "conflict diamonds," which figure in the latest James Bond movie, "Die Another Day," deserve their evil reputation. These are the stones that finance killing, whether in civil war or acts of terrorism. Roberts, citing a report by a human rights group, Global Witness, says both Al Qaeda and Hezbollah have traded in African diamonds. The good news, if it can be called that, is that Arab terrorists' involvement with African diamonds is of "minor consequence," since "it is mostly European and South African mining interests that have profited in the impoverished and pillaged diamond fields of Africa over the past one hundred years." International agreements, however, ensure that most diamonds "will be entirely innocent of any association with terrorism" in the future, she adds. Indeed, the controls have achieved more than intended, cutting into the gray market, where dealers had been able to evade taxes or government marketing controls. Roberts's dense book roams the globe from Africa to Arkansas, across time from the 19th century to the present, and among topics from the cartel's history to her own probe of it. She says she has spent a generation probing the industry and has been arrested and even beaten for her trouble. Her muckraking is earnest, but given what she's invested, it's not surprising that she commits the journalistic mistake of notebook-dumping, jamming more detail into "Glitter & Greed" than most readers are likely to want. One chapter includes a tour of individual mines in Africa, seemingly every last one. Still, it's a service to make people more conscientious about the origins of the beautiful things that we covet. Roberts ends with the hope that time will bring "a chance to make diamonds not just a sign of human love, but also a sign of human justice and fair play." Her book makes the reader dubious. To paraphrase De Beers's famous slogan, greed, like diamonds, is forever. boston.com