Customer Reviews

Glitter & Greed: The Secret World of the Diamond Cartel

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

A glittering account of the diamond trade
This 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, Glitter and Greed traces the radical overhaul in the diamond industry's image and practice over the past five years. De Beers itself now stands in the forefront of the campaign against "conflict diamonds" sold to fund civil war. Roberts follows the refinement of the "Kimberley Process" designed to certify that the rocks on your ring come from a clean source. She decides, with a wealth of evidence, that a "Kimberley" stone offers no guarantee that the diamond "will not have been cut illegally by a child" or "mined by a miner breathing asbestos dust". As a feat of investigation, her complex but gripping book for once merits that tarnished plaudit, "brilliant". As for the performance of British publishers faced with its revelations - "lacklustre" would be kind. "

I hesitate to give this book such a poor rating, because it's significantly better than the other accounts I've read and the facts need to be heard. But, following the all-too-familiar trend of the modern "factual account", it's poorly written and presents its case in a rather slapdash fashion.

While I have no doubt that the basic story (DeBeers' blatant manipulation of diamond prices, dangerous working conditions in diamond mines, and rampant trade in "blood diamonds") is accurate to some degree, it's a challenge to find anything resembling specific claims with definite proof. The book reminds me more of a "20/20 expose" than a careful, verifiable and accurate telling. Random photographs scattered throughout the text (of such fascinating subjects as outside entrances to mine workers' quarters) do little to improve this impression. Worse, there are a few "side subjects" (such as a discussion of synthetic diamonds) that contain obvious inaccuracies.

There's an interesting and vital story here, and Roberts is to be commended for presenting it in the face of a cartel with billions of dollars at stake and no compunction to "play fair". (Compare Roberts' relatively hard-hitting story to Michael Hart's ambivalent, yet very probably DeBeers-approved, "Diamond".) If the appendix describing her difficulties in getting her film aired is to be believed, there's more than a little "funny business" going on.

But... it's such a fascinating story that it doesn't need the journalistic excess that permeates this book. A sober and straightforward account would've been more convincing and ultimately more helpful.

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!

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.

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.

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.

I am so glad I took the time to sit and read this book. What a fantastic story about a world of such greed and cartels. It really is interesting as to how dirty the world of fine jewellery can be. Shame on De Beers for all it has done and encouraged. Congratulations to the author for persevering in circumstances which were clearly stacked against her. I had no idea, when I started reading this book, just how abusive the world of diamonds, and presumably other fine stones/gold etc, is. For what ultimately can be such a beautiful item, it is filled with heartbreak, pain and suffering of an unimaginable scale. I saw "Blood Diamond" and thought it a good insight but this book is so much more. It really does make someone with a consience think about whether they do want those lovely sparkling genuine stones or whether the manmade version would be better. I had no idea about the danger to health, not only from the physical digging but the conditions of asbestosis and the damage caused to the lungs of the cutters in appaling conditions. My hat off to the writer - what a superb book and I hope you enjoyed the long soak in the bath that you were looking for when you finished writing.

Although the book is a bit hardgoing at times, persevere!!!! It is worth it.

The book is a great commentary on the diamond mining and diamond industry. The problem is that author is an advocate against DeBeers and the diamond industry. She does her best to document the facts but every word is through the filter of her hatred of the DTC and DeBeers. It seems that they can do nothing right anywhere at anytime. Myself personally being in the diamond industry I can see her bias, others may not.

I enjoyed this book for the most part. I enjoyed reading it because I was already interested in the concepts. Debeers cover up, master marketing, Bloody wars funded by diamonds that rich people wear. I soon came to realize that there was little of that. This book could have been written much better. All the components of a fascinating story are here. Instead you are left with a feeling of, "I know diamonds are evil stop telling me the same thing over and over!" I wish that this book would have gone deeper into the lives of the people that this industry has a negative effect on.

While the subject of this book is facinating, and the information this book contains is wonderful, it is a very badly written book.

The jumpy, disjointed prose lends itself more to reader confusion than to any sort of enjoyment or edification. If I were writing a thesis this would be one of my first picks for reference material, but for the casual reader who wants to be informed on this important subject I recommend skipping this book entirely.

Multiple lines of narrative collide and crisscross from the first chapter, and throughout the book is peppered with tiny black and white photos which, more often than not, have nothing to do with the topic on the page.

It feels like Ms. Roberts had so much to say that she wanted to say it all at once with no regard for good writing. The best and most powerful books are those that combine solid reporting and superb narrative. Unfortunately this will not be the book to blow the covers off the diamond industry because neither Ms. Roberts nor her editor have a grasp on how to sell a story at the same time as shoveling facts onto the lap of the reader.