Rachel Maddow, "Blowout"

.

 

 

Rachel Maddow, "Blowout: Corrupted Democracy,

Rogue State Russia, and the Richest, Most

Destructive Industry on Earth" (2019)

 

Book Review (The New York Times)

 

도서관 라운지 책으로 "Introduction" 몇 페이지를 읽어보고 흥미를 갖게 되었는데, 그러고서 서너 페이지 더 읽기는 했지만, 위 서평을 읽고 나니 이걸로 충분하고 시간과 마음의 평화를 위해서는 더욱 그렇다는 생각이다.

 

위 서평에서

 

“'Blowout' is a rollickingly well-written book, filled with fascinating, exciting and alarming stories about the impact of the oil and gas industry on the world today."

 

"Maddow tells the incredible, depressing story of Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, the son of the long-serving dictator of Equatorial Guinea, a country that saw its oil revenues grow from $2.1 million in 1993 to a staggering $3.9 billion in 2007. Despite these billions pouring into state coffers, an NGO observed in 2009, '77 percent of the population lives in poverty, 35 percent die before the age of 40 and 57 percent lack access to safe water.'”

 

But life at that time is good for Teodoro, who owns a $100 million house in Paris, a $30 million beach house in Malibu, a $7 million vacation home in South Africa, one of the world’s largest yachts and dozens of racecars. When his drivers take one of Teodoro’s many girlfriends shopping, they are given a shoe box filled with up to $80,000 in cash for a single outing. His bill for one spree at an auction house in 2010, Maddow notes, would have paid the entire annual wages of 3,300 of his countrymen, since three-quarters of them live on $2 a day."

 

"Maddow carefully takes us through the manner in which Putin asserted greater and greater control over Russia’s vast oil and gas resources."

 

"As oil prices rose, so did Putin’s ambitions, which reached a symbolic height with his decision to host the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Sochi .... In a detailed, thorough analysis of the project, the Russian opposition leader Boris Nemtsov concluded that the Sochi Olympics had cost more than the previous 21 Winter Olympics combined, because Putin’s favored builders had lined their pockets with $25-$30 billion. A year later, Nemtsov was dead, assassinated just outside the Kremlin’s walls.

 

One of the book’s themes is the degree to which Western capitalists — bankers and oilmen — abetted Putin’s rise to power, cheered on his capture of resources and partnered with him no matter what he was doing to Russia’s democratic and capitalist experiment. Chief among them was Exxon’s C.E.O. Rex Tillerson (later the secretary of state)."