Conception Ken Silversteins The Secret World of Lubricate is like picking up a rock in the middle of the night and shining a flashlight at the sinister, crawly things found beneath. The emphasis is on the word secret since various of the men he scrutinizes prefer it that method. Even when their activities remain within the law, their assault on ethics and politeness would provoke a Sodom and Gomorrah punishment from a just god if one existed. Is moral turpitude, criminality and a bestial equal of greed intrinsically connected to making a living as a middleman in the fuel industry? That is the winding up a reader would inducement taking into consideration conception the fast-paced and unconditionally entertaining tour led by Ken Silverstein, our Virgilian guide to a Dantes Inferno fueled by lubricate and gas.
Silverstein manages a juggling act that puts Philippe Small to embarrass. Period his record of exploratory newspaper journalism, remarkably that portion of it dealing with energy industry sleazebags, is well-established, he manages to ingratiate himself with a few of the major players even organization to create friendships. Of course, if one of them is gazillionaire Ely Calil, an lubricate middleman who is one of the richest men in England, there are certain rewards. Dinner on Calils dime would incorporate on one occasion a bouillabaisse, small plates of scallops in a truffle sauce, and veal haunch with poached pear. One imagines Silverstein taking notes less than the table sneakily for a future regulation. If particulars such as this give the reader a sense of the opulence enjoyed by lubricate tycoons no doubt within the law, it is thoroughly the business side of things bare by Silverstein that get to you wonder if he choice ever be invited to dinner again.
In 2002 Ely Calil was the middleman between Elf Aquitaine, a French lubricate business, and Sani Abacha, the Nigerian dictator. Elf was bribing Abacha to acquire preferential treatment for lubricate drilling in a rural area that is a poster preschooler for what a few on the not here label the supply curse. Calil and two further Lebanese smooth operators split a commission of $70 million for their portion in the deal. Among a extensive string of human privileges abuses, Abacha prepared the execution of Ken Saro-Wiwa, a champion of the Ogoni people whose homeland lubricate companies had polluted beyond patch up.
Calil was too involved with skullduggery in Equatorial Guinea, another African oil-producing nation, even though like various of the people operating in the shady lubricate business he vociferously claimed his innocence. In 2004 a grouping of sixty South African and European mercenaries were arrested in Zimbabwe in the act of purchasing weapons to be used versus the government of Equatorial Guinea, a nation with a inhabitants of less than a million and swimming in fuel. They intended to take the place of the current dictator with one from the past, one Severo Moto. Among the arrested conspirators was none further than Correct Thatcher, Maggies reprobate son.
On the strength of his hard-hitting pieces on the Obiang kleptocracy in Equatorial Guinea, Silverstein was invited to meet with Moto in Washington by a PR consultant working on his behalf. Calil was at the meeting as well and like this began the friendship that fostered lavish meals of scallops in truffle sauce and hair-raising exposes of lubricate industry criminality.
One could hardly imagine Silverstein ever using his finely honed journalistic skills to burnish the reputation of a earlier big-shot like Severo Moto remarkably when it is so much new rewarding to take nap the Obiang clan. No count Motos intentions, the role of people like Correct Thatcher was to get to sure that a original leader would be new quick to respond to inclusive capital than the long-suffering inhabitants.
Subdivision three of The Secret World of Lubricate is devoted to an up-close examination of Teodorin Obiang, the son of the man who rules Equatorial Guinea with an iron fist. If they bent a pictorial version of the Oxford English Lexicon, his portrait would adorn the doorway for decadent. Born in 1971, the future dictator is a throwback to the playboys of the 1950s such as Porfirio Rubirosa of the Dominican Republic. Civilization being on a steep descent on top of the past 50 years or so, Rubirosa comes across as a model of Calvinesque restraint compared to Obiang.
Obiang owned a 15 thousand square foot house in Malibu, California wherever his days were devoted to shopping on Rodeo Drive and his nights to partying at discos in the business of his entourage. One has to wonder why Bob Dylan would plan to live in Malibu as extensive as a big shot like Teodorin Obiang could be included as a neighbor. Among Obiangs obsessions were dear cars, to the time wherever it became virtually psychotic as Silverstein reports:
When it came to spending practice, Teodorin wasnt to be outdone by his Hollywood-star neighbors. He owned at least three dozen luxury cars, including seven Ferraris, five Bentleys, four Rolls-Royces, two Lamborghinis, two Mercedes-Benzes, two Porsches, two Maybachs, and an Aston Martin, with a combined insured value of around $10 million, according to the Senate investigation. There were far too various cars to keep at the estate, so Teodorin rented storage space in the garage of the Petersen Automotive Museum on Wilshire Drive and had his drivers fetch the one he sought after for an outing, a choice that sometimes depended on his attire. Im wearing dejected shoes, so acquire me the dejected Rolls at present, he once told his chauffeur Giacalone.
His favorite was a Bugatti Veyron, a sports car that be capable of make speeds of new than 250 miles per hour and sells original for going on for $2 million. One night, Teodorin parked his toy adjoining the entrance of LErmitage, a favorite hangout wherever hed no more for drinks. When he saw gawkers stop to admire it, he sent Giacalone sponsor to Malibu by yellow cab so Giacalone could drive sponsor his second Bugatti to park next to it.
With money to burn, the Obiang clan could be expected to hire its own throng of PR specialists the method that their rival Severo Moto had. I for all time had my suspicions that a few of their lubricate wealth might have been lubricating the Militant newspaper of the Socialist Workforce Party, a tiny sect that once played a major role in the Vietnam pacifist development, so much so that I was persuadedalasto join.
In 2009 the socialist newspaper told its readers that revenue in use infrom lubricate contracts is being used in portion to develop fundamental infrastructure on which modern industry and rising labor productivity depend and that as a result hundreds of thousands gain much easier access to health-care facilities, schools, markets, and jobs. The reality had nothing to do with this gushing portrait. Silverstein reports that 45ths of its inhabitants lives below the poverty line and one in three dies earlier than the age of 40all this period the heir apparent choice lone be satisfied by two Bugattis, not one.
The Secret World of Lubricate is not just a lively account of wickedness. It is too an informative guide to how corruption lubricates the industry largely based on lubricants. If the lubricate industry is best known for its big players like Exxon and BP, Silversteins book fills in the gaps. Without lobbyists, brokers, handlers, consultants, and further pimps (mostly male, although there are a few females), the industry would grind to a halt. There are chapters on Tony Blair and Neil Bush that lends credence to the proposition that when you are dealing with lubricate, liberals and conservatives are equally squalid. Blair in particular comes across as a big shot with a love of money as pathological as the Equatorial Guinean kleptocracy.
Silverstein hones in on Tony Blairs gaseous speeches that earn him $20 million per year, mostly paid by corporate and governmental bigwigs looking to exploit the links he has built up on top of the years. Silverstein notes that those speeches get to Mitt Romney sound like Malcolm X by comparison.
There are precise hardly any exploratory journalists that are as much fun to read as Ken Silverstein, aside from for Jeff St. Clair of CounterPunch and his at the last co-editor Alexander Cockburn. As such it is no accident that Ken Silverstein launched CounterPunch as a print pamphlet sponsor in 1993, when the Internet was in its relative early life. Taking into consideration leaving it in the good hands of St. Clair and Cockburn in 1996, Silverstein went on to fight the good fight in the pages of the Washington Publish, Harpers, Mother Jones, and the Nation on top of the years. In my view, he continues the abundant tradition of exploratory coverage of people like I.F. Stone, just as CounterPunch does. That should be approval as much as necessary to pick up a copy of The Secret World of Lubricate without delay.
