--- --------------- WIND ------------------- -- Wind Power for the Homeowner, by Donald Marier, 1981, 368pp., $16.95, from: Rodale Press 33 East Minor Street Emmaus, PA 18049 Two things about this book are impressive. First, it provides good information on all aspects·of installing a wind system, technical and nontechnical: siting, generators, rotors, towers, batteries, inverters, controls, installation, wiring, legal considerations, and economics. Secondly, it presents all this information in plain language without sacrificing necessary technical detail. Although I would not design a wind system based solely on what can be learned from this book, it is certainly a good, solid, integrated and readable overview. -Gail Katz --- ----- -------------------·-- CORPORATIONS --- - Trilaterialism: The Trilateral Commission and Elite Planning for World Management, edited by Holly Sklar, 1980, 604pp., $9.00, from: South End Press Box 68, Astor Station Boston, MA 02123 Far from being a coterie of international conspirators with designs on covertly ruling the world, the Trilateral Commission is, in reality, a group of concerned citizens interested infostering greater understanding - and cooperation among international allies. -David Rockefeller, 1980. It is not surprising that the group of "concerned citizens" referred to by Mr. Rockefeller should provoke a variety of.conspiracy theories from both the Right and the Left. They are 300 of the most powerful people on earth. Trilateral Commission members are drawn from the top echelons of international business, government, academia, media, and conservative labor in North America, Western Europe and Japan. Trilateral alumni (members officially resign upon entering public service) include George Bush, Jimmy Carter, Henry Kissinger, Walter Mondale, Caspar Weinberger, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and John Anderson. One can't help but wonder what's being discussed in the Trilateral Clubhouse-and how decisions made there might affect the four billion of us who don't measure up for Commission membership. Editor Holly Sklar and the two dozen contributors to Trilateralism see the Commission as something less than a global conspiracy, but a good deal more than a snobbish international fraternity. Trilateralists are portrayed here as a thoroughly fallible , group, plagued by internal contradictions and differences of opinion, but with a clear consensus on the absolute necessity for keeping the trilateral nations at the center of world economic and political power. The Commission seeks to monitor and manage changing world conditions in ways which will ultimately lead (in Sklar's words) to a "pseudo postnational world in which social, economic and political values originating in the trilateral regions are transformed into universal values." Closely tied to the trilateral program, both as agent and as beneficiary I is the multinational corporation. Corporate planners market not only products in the developing world, but lifestyles imitative of Western models. The hope, says Sklar, is that "enthusiastic consumption-of even the From Trilateralism cheapest goods at the poorest levels-will be a balm for the exploitation endured in the workplace, serving the dual corporate aim of stability and profitability." To assure corporations of the continued access to cheap labor and stable supplies of raw materials necessary to their market expansion, trilateralists carefully monitor and (wherever possible) give direction to Third World economic development programs and movements for political reform. Under trilateral guidance, development programs are likely to result in continued neocolonial dependency and reform movements are apt to find themselves co-opted or short-circuited. Methods employed by the trilateralists in carrying out their policies around the world are detailed by Sklar and her associates in a series of case studies. Among the most revealing of these are "Apartheid and Trilateralism: Partners in South Africa" by Carolyn Brown, "The Grim Reaper: The Trilateral Commission Takes on World Hunger" by Dahlia Rudavsky, and "The U.S. October 1981 RAIN Page 17 Colonial Empire is as Close as the Nearest Reservation" (a look at government/corporate/trilateral exploitation of energy resources on Indian lands) by Michael Garitty. A 41-page Trilateral Commission Who's Who, detailing the remarkably intertwined political, corporate, academic, and institutional connections of Commission members, makes for even more fascinating reading. Like Global Reach (see Rain book, p.32) and Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity (see RAIN IV: 5 ,4), Trilateralism is a 11 must read" book which goes a long way toward helping us understand how power works in the world. - JF Multinational Monitor, monthly, $15/yr. personal, $20/yr. nonprofit institutio,-is, $30/yr. business institutions, from: P.O. Box 19312 Washington, DC 20036 Why do so many "independent" pineapple growers 'i.n Thailand find themselves perpetually in debt to Castle & Cook? Why has a black South African labor union recently called for a nation-wide boycott of ColgatePalmolive products? What does Cargill, the international grain company, have to do with the fact tht Brazil is now growing soybeans for livestock on land which once provided , food for people? The Multinational Monitor will give you the answers. Published by the Corporate Accountability Reseatch Group, this consistently absorbing periodical specializes in exposing the latest mercenary maneuvers of global corporations. The Monitor's provocative value was well described by one of its readers in a recently published letter to the editor: "I won't say that I enjoy your publication, but I compulsively await and avidly read each issue, thus stoking the fires of my concern for the endangered species homo sapie!1s." -JF The United States and the Global Struggle for Minerals, by Alfred E. Eckes, Jr., 1979, 353pp., $8.95, from: University of Texas Press Box 7819 Austin, TX 78712 What effects have vanadiurp, molybdenum, iridium and palladium had on considerations of war and peace? This history, based largely on US government documents not available for study until recent years, traces how access or non-access to minerals has influenced US foreign po1icy and military planning since World War I. Academic in approach and conservative in tone, it nevertheless provides valuable historical background on present-day issues of global resource control raised in such recent books as The Lean Years by Richard Barnet (see RAIN VII:2, 17) and, Trilateralism, edited by Holly Sklar (see review this issue). - JF
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