That’s because, over the course of writing about 30 books, serving for close to three decades in the Swiss parliament, and relentlessly crusading for leftwing causes in his free time, Ziegler has made a career of unsparing criticism of his home country and its outsize influence on the rest of the world.
More than half the bags of coffee in the world pass “through” Switzerland, most of them via firms in and around Geneva, in much the same fashion.
In early 1964, Jean Ziegler, a young Swiss politician, received a phone call from a man claiming to represent Ernesto “Che” Guevara, the Cuban revolutionary and minister of industry.
That is no impediment to its being home to some of the biggest shipping companies in the world, which charter and manage vessels from Geneva while shrouding their beneficial (de facto) owners in layers of corporate secrecy.
Ziegler heard the echoes of oppression closer to home, too, in the deracinated commodity exchanges through which speculators bet on the price of food and fuel; and in the bank vaults mere steps from his home, where kleptocrats siphoned away their countries’ natural resources.
