Glitter & Greed: The Secret World of the Diamond Cartel

by Janine Roberts and Janine Farrell-Robert

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1932857605
• ISBN13: 9781932857603
• Release Date: April 2007
• Publisher: Disinformation Company
• Length: 375 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 6.4" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

An important expose

Written by journalist and human rights activist Janine Roberts, and now in a newly revised edition, Glitter & Greed: The Secret World of the Diamond Cartel is a shocking expose of the inequalities, economic manipulation, inhuman treatment, and outright cruelties facilitated and perpetuated by the global Big Diamond industry - most notably the notorious De Beers and Oppenheimer cartels. Chapters go far beyond the injustice covered in the recent popular movie "The Blood Diamond", revealing how some major diamond companies collaborated with Hitler's Germany and industrial diamond supplies were artificially restricted, damaging the American war effort in World War II; how child labor is used to cut diamonds, with horrifically detrimental effects on children's health; how tuberculosis and other life-threatening conditions flourish among diamond miners; how terrorism has milked money from the diamond trade for decades; why the Kimberly Process meant to protect Americans from supporting murderers with their diamond money has failed; and how the myth that diamonds are "rare" has been perpetrated through the fixing of diamond prices and other nefarious means. A chilling expose that not only roots out evidence of cruelty but also proposes reforms and solutions. In an era of rampant corporate greed, immorality, and malfeasance, "Glitter & Greed" is a "must-read" for anyone considering buying a diamond, and carries the absolute highest recommendation.

Reviewed in the Independent as "enthralling" and "brilliant!

A glittering account of the diamond tradeThis review was in The Independent newspaper in the UK on May 22nd. It is by Boyd Tonkin. I think it one of the best."After Disney apparently refused to handle Michael Moore's celluloid polemic, Fahrenheit 9/11, the row over market censorship rumbled long and loud. That's America - and Hollywood - pundits over here might say. In Britain, and in the book world, we take such liberty for granted.We can't, of course. Publishers' fear of libel suits - in particular, of "libel tourism" by foreign claimants - acts as an often-invisible brake on controversy. Mostly, it inhibits not vapid tittle-tattle about private lives but serious reportage. Take Craig Unger's House of Bush, House of Saud, acclaimed in the US for a careful exposure of the close ties between the two first families. Here, Secker & Warburg announced the book but then failed to release it. In other cases, news of the suppression of books may emerge very late, or not at all. Thanks to an intrepid US firm, an extraordinary example has just come to light.Disinformation, a New York outfit, has issued a formidably well-researched and widely-sourced account of the global diamond trade by the Australian-based investigative journalist Janine Roberts. It strikes this lay reader as one of the most dogged and damning exposés of a near-monopolistic industry to appear in years. The greater wonder is that it has appeared at all.Roberts first began to unearth the stories of diamond miners and traders while reporting a clash between Aboriginal people and prospectors more than 20 years ago. The project meant, above all, following the trail of De Beers. In Africa, De Beers still mines "about 45 per cent by value of the total annual global diamond production". Through its selling arm, the Diamond Trading Company, it "markets some two-thirds of global supply". In partnership with the luxury-goods group LVMH, it is currently looking for new ways "to exploit the value of its brand". The quoted phrases don't come from Roberts's enthralling and alarming history of the company's activities. They appear on the official De Beers website.Glitter and Greed records two decades of hair-raising research in Africa, Australia and India. It explores with - if anything - a surfeit of documentation the tangled links between diamond trading, civil strife, child labour and semi-slavery. As Roberts writes, "When Princess Diana met with Angolan land-mine victims, she met victims of the proceeds of diamond sales".Many of Roberts's discoveries entered the public domain in a two-part BBC documentary, The Diamond Empire, screened (with cuts) in 1994. By that stage, she had also completed a book. Doubleday's reader called it "sensational, well-documented and very controversial". Too much so, it seems: the investigation featured in the catalogue but never appeared. Later, Little, Brown declined to publish, hoping that Roberts could find a "less cowardly" home. Now she has.Fully updated, Glitt

Excellent

This is about the best and most up to date record of the offensive cartel that is De Beers. Roberts details pretty much everything I have learned in the last six years as a synthetic diamond grower. There is some seriosuly good investigative journalism in this text, only let down by the diamond growth chapter - but hey, she isn't a scientist one doesn't expect perfection. However, it would have been nice if she cited Hazen's "The Diamond Makers", especially since the person who she credits with the first man made synthesis of diamond is largely thought of as having only grown silicon carbide (relatively easy to confuse the two on hardness at least). Roberts maages to gain access to some places thought untouchable such as the De Beers mines, and it is depressing to find that everything you hear on the grapevine is basically true. This industry is hard to fathom at the best of times, with the corruption and unethical treatment of human beings. Worse still is the wool being pulled over the consumers eyes over conflict diamonds, exploiting the progession of consumer conscience. This is horrible and there needs to be some real action from the UN, rather than getting into bed with the problem!

glitter and greed

Read this book and you will never buy a diamond product. Virtually each page reveals how rotten the diamond industry is and those associated with it. Interestingly this book has been ignored by most major papers i.e. Washington Post, NY Times, Wall St. Journal which makes one wonder if the powerful diamond industry is able to limit review of this book.

Glitter and Greed is a definitive work on diamond intrigue

Being part of the family who mined Arkansas Diamonds, I saw much detail, painstaking research, and insight about the topics. A fascinating read and honest reporting.