Word: middlemen
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Over the past three months, TIME has interviewed Iraqi weapons scientists, middlemen and former government officials. Saddam's henchmen all make essentially the same claim: that Iraq's once massive unconventional-weapons program was destroyed or dismantled in the 1990s and never rebuilt; that officials destroyed or never kept the documents that would prove it; that the shell games Saddam played with U.N. inspectors were designed to conceal his progress on conventional weapons systems--missiles, air defenses, radar--not biological or chemical programs; and that even Saddam, a sucker for a new gadget or invention or toxin, may not have...
Chinaveg no longer relies on rings of police around fields to protect its crop. It has built business relationships using local farmers as middlemen (and watchdogs). The next step is to introduce equipment, like tractors, that can increase yields and quality. Already Chinaveg is growing. Total sales were up 40% last year, to $5 million--picture a head of lettuce being sold every second--and sales of higher-margin packaged salads also grew 40%, to $2.7 million. In the U.S., bags of "fresh-cut" produce are the fastest growing segment of the market, up from sales of $300 million...
...world. Yet despite our surmountable influence in the market, few Americans realize that their consumer choices can adversely affect coffee farmers who often go underpaid for their work. Many small coffee farmers rely on intermediates to buy and bundle their individual crops to sell to larger corporations. But these middlemen pay farmers incredibly low rates for their harvests—at prices that are often less than the costs of production...
...long been the largest single purchaser of Iraqi oil, although often through intermediaries, some of which may pay kickbacks to Baghdad. Washington supports the Oil for Food program because it helps funnel money to the Iraqi people, but the illegal surcharges paid by middlemen are passed on to U.S. refineries and, eventually, come out of the pockets of American motorists. In January 2002, when President Bush named Iraq as part of the "axis of evil," the U.S. was buying some 75% of all Iraqi oil funneled through the Oil for Food program...
...profit in the sons' scams stems from exploiting local price differences. In Iraq, 20 liters of gasoline can be purchased for as little as 50¢ and resold in neighboring countries that produce no oil for as much as $10. Luxury items are smuggled in tax free by middlemen and then resold at a higher price. One big moneymaker for the sons involves trucking diesel fuel into Turkey. The trade has fallen off amid recent preparations for war, but at its high point, according to the Coalition for International Justice, a Washington-based human-rights group, some 45,000 Turkish truckers...