Goodreads Doesn't Have It, Data Migration: Extracting Profit
This would be five stars but it makes a lot of the same mistakes that many of the content I've bought from Haymarket books has been guilty of; mainly identifying the problem, but not doing a study why what they want, "a worker's unification" isn't working. They failed to put together that "stomach politics" --voting from need, and voting because a fundamental, basic need is being filled by a certain party -- is precisely the technique that allows for the illusion of democracy that keeps international extractive interests in power by not alerting them to the non-democratic violation happening because it was a "democratic" election. Voting from the stomach or voting from the housing need should not be viewed as a democratic election; it should be viewed as an extortion of human rights. Then, when these individuals are in charge they walk back on their promises and jail and even torture anyone who points that out. What democratically elected individual would risk losing their constituency in such a way when called out for false promises, other than one that never respected it to begin with and knows there's nothing to alienate...just a few foreign powers to play a "democratic vanity" game with? To me, this book shows me not that we need a "worker's unification" which a democracy should be, but rather we need to stop calling elections that don't receive fulfilled promises and force their vote through providing for basic needs democratic. We need true democracy, but the problem is that's not possible without a small period where the foundation is revamped so that needs are covered and next election people aren't voting on need. That is a combination of both of the techniques mentioned in the book.
In addition, the book does in fact concur that China does in fact allow for corruption as a cheap trick to gain more power in Africa without the USA, weaponizing the fact they don't answer to transparency NATO based procedures and simply covering up these illicit (and pretty disgusting enablements) in a black box of lies and lack of transparency which China is notoriously guilty of when it comes to financial and even medical policy. However, "democracy" excuses for extraction by Western countries "concerned about human rights" are just as hypocritical. What's left are indigenous individuals who can't voice their opinions because they are deep in the horrifying process of being stripped of all their resources by two huge powerhouses that are keen to make sure there is no foundation for them to fight back. I think it was very ignorant of the author to say that "instability leads to revolution'; I think that's wrong. Instability is the very tool of these horrifying superpowers to keep the individuals in an ongoing cycle of trauma so they can't cohere their thoughts and kick off their assailant. So that one 'got past the dragon' so the speak.
It also speaks on governing by debt...blaming Africa for the failed neoliberal policies that include deregulation and "flexibilization" based on arbitrary black box issues that are incompetently run due to there being no sincerely interested financial watchdog in the area outside of extractive interests and people vaguely interested in a social revolution without any real plan or ability to speak on how and why it would and doesn't happen.
It also speaks on the Africa's known issue of only having raw resources and industry loans being levied by predatory alternations of Chinese corruption-enablement or American/European neoliberal restructuring scams meant to keep local finances covertly destabilized to avoid indigenous empowerment and to keep extractive processes of things like oil uninterrupted all while pretending to care about democracy which is truly horrifying for the reputation of democracy in Africa, and may explain a lot of the anti-democratic thought in Africa...those that believe there "is no real democracy" are not familiar with anarchic democracy but false-face neoliberal democracies used by extractive Western human rights coalitions.
Depressed wages are also big in this book. Nowhere else but in Africa have I seen wages allowed to get to such a level; another example they gave is the Chinese not giving African miners helmets until they have worked there two months...that's horrifying. The depressed wages, despite being the wages assigned by "human rights" European countries, are kept minimal simply because a lot of times they found Africans that low post-Chinese exploitation, and whatever they say about human rights, the deal was so sweet so they kept it going. They took the temptation and that's something those who actually care should never unsee...when they had to make a hard moral choice that would actually cost them, many of these "human rights" concerned European countries kept covertly going with the horrifyingly dehumanized wage that China had either installed or allowed to happen at the hands of local thugs (usually a combination of both). Then most of the profits go straight into the hands of firms, showing just how bad the extraction was...at a certain point it just becomes clear it's an ongoing financial rape. There's no other way to put it. They can't kick these two off because they're too big, and they're both full of sh*t, to be frank.
Really horrifying book and it told the truth. However, it lacks any sufficiently good plan and analysis for how to get out of that logistically using the knowledge that the book established. I think that's a waste a time to build up the foreknowledge like that only to completely flop when it's time for an actionable, potent plan. It's clear according to the reading the victims don't have the resources to figure that out...so it's up to people that do, like people who write books on Africa for money and have that kind of time to also take the time to come up with a truly doable way out.