2/27/2006: Wheat mountains

[Wombat]

Australian wheat is exported by a legal monopoly called the Australian Wheat Board. The AWB is currently in a lot of trouble for exporting to Iraq before the US invasion while knowing that some of the money was going to Saddam. It's part of the "oil for food" scandal. The Australian government is also getting a lot of bad publicity right now as there are accusations that the government knew about the kickbacks and turned a blind eye.

Some of you might be surprised at the massive volumes of Australian exports... not just beer and wool (which is what we seem to be most famous for), but also most of the world's uranium, most of the world's opals, huge amounts of coal and wheat, a lot of sheep and beef and gold and diamonds... Australia is a country that is rich from mining and primary production, despite the fact that most of the country is infertile desert.