"Raw Deals" or "Who Controls What"

[itzamirakul]

This rather interesting information is from a Village Voice book review (Voice Choices Dec. 15-21, 2004). the book is: It's All For Sale by James Ridgeway.The review was written by Matthew Fleischer-Black.

<snip>
The aluminum pan you cooked your egg in this morning began as a bauxite deposit in a mountain in Jamaica. The cinnamon on your toast was once the bark of a tree in Sri Lanka - not a cinnamon tree, either. The cut flowers on your table? From Columbia.

Start questioning where everyday things come from. James Ridgeway tell us in It's All For Sale, and often you will get a surprisingly simple answer. Behind the scenes of it all, he says, a small group of private companies governs trade of the world's materials. Five companies control the flow of petroleum. Four corporations reign over the grain trade. Three each dominate timber, uranium, and tea. Two lead the way on fresh water and coffee, while one each runs diamonds and cigarettes. <snip>

<snip>
...Ridgeway's preoccupied with compiling all the tactics that megacorporations use to keep their invisible role supplying us. They take over an entire supply chain. they underreport reserves of exhaustible resources and overstate demand, inducing the public to fixate on shortages. (The natural-gas industry once failed to report to regulators 8.8 trillion cubic feet of fuel.) Less cleverly, they pay off military strongmen, hire mercenary armies, and exploit labor.

People have long used violence and operated in bad faith to lock up vital goods....This book expands and updates his Who Owns the Earth? (1980)....He has added discussions of water ("the commodity that we most take for granted"), flowers, slavery, cadavers, body parts, oceans, sky, and genetics.<snip>

<snip>
Some of the most sprawling of the conglomerates are trying to make money from the new products. BECHTEL CORPORATION and VIVENDI UNIVERSAL, for instance, are now selling fresh water to governments.

Ridgeway's book condenses knowledge of specific information essential to our culture -- and which few discuss.

Disclaimer: I am not associated with nor do I even know Mr. Ridgeway. I found the information valuable for us to remember although much is not new