-
The Looting Machine
- Warlords, Oligarchs, Corporations, Smugglers, and the Theft of Africa's Wealth
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 11 hrs and 5 mins
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Publisher's summary
The trade in oil, gas, gems, metals, and rare earth minerals wreaks havoc in Africa. During the years when Brazil, India, China, and the other "emerging markets" have transformed their economies, Africa's resource states remained tethered to the bottom of the industrial supply chain. While Africa accounts for about 30 percent of the world's reserves of hydrocarbons and minerals and 14 percent of the world's population, its share of global manufacturing stood in 2011 exactly where it stood in 2000: at 1 percent.
In his first book, The Looting Machine, Tom Burgis exposes the truth about the African development miracle: for the resource states, it's a mirage. The oil, copper, diamonds, gold, and coltan deposits attract a global network of traders, bankers, corporate extractors, and investors who combine with venal political cabals to loot the states' value. And the vagaries of resource-dependent economies could pitch Africa's new middle class back into destitution just as quickly as they climbed out of it. The ground beneath their feet is as precarious as a Congolese mine shaft; their prosperity could spill away like crude from a busted pipeline.
This catastrophic social disintegration is not merely a continuation of Africa's past as a colonial victim. The looting now is accelerating as never before. As global demand for Africa's resources rises, a handful of Africans are becoming legitimately rich, but the vast majority, like the continent as a whole, is being fleeced. Outsiders tend to think of Africa as a great drain of philanthropy. But look more closely at the resource industry, and the relationship between Africa and the rest of the world looks rather different.
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Experts believe that Brazil, the world's fifth largest country and its seventh largest economy, will be one of the most important global powers by the year 2030. Yet far more attention has been paid to the other rising behemoths: Russia, India, and China. Often ignored and underappreciated, Brazil, according to renowned, award-winning journalist Michael Reid, has finally begun to live up to its potential but faces important challenges before it becomes a nation of substantial global significance.
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Good short history of Brazil, lame pronunciation
- By Bubu Mungani on 07-21-19
By: Michael Reid
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Saudi, Inc.
- The Arabian Kingdom's Pursuit of Profit and Power
- By: Ellen R. Wald PhD
- Narrated by: Paul Ansdell
- Length: 11 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Over more than a century, fed by ambition and oil wealth, al Saud (as the royal family is known) has come from having next to nothing to ruling as absolute monarchs. Their story starts with Saudi Arabia's founder, the lowly refugee Abdul Aziz, embarking on a daring gambit to reconquer his family's ancestral home: the mud-walled city of Riyadh. And it ends with al Saud's most ambitious move yet: taking Aramco, the multinational business that has made them the wealthiest family in the world, public.
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Excellent modern history of Saudi Arabia
- By Rob Hafen on 05-31-18
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This Brave New World
- India, China and the United States
- By: Anja Manuel
- Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley
- Length: 12 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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In the next decade and a half, China and India will become two of the world's indispensable powers - whether they rise peacefully or not. During that time, Asia will surpass the combined strength of North America and Europe in economic might, population size, and military spending. Both India and China will have vetoes over many international decisions, from climate change to global trade, human rights, and business standards.
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Good book, could be better
- By General on 09-23-16
By: Anja Manuel
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From Silk to Silicon
- The Story of Globalization Through Ten Extraordinary Lives
- By: Jeffrey E. Garten
- Narrated by: Tom Perkins
- Length: 11 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
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From Silk to Silicon tells the story of who these men and women were, what they did, how they did it, and how their achievements continue to shape our world today.
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Fantastic Journey
- By Michael on 06-06-16
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The Profiteers
- Bechtel and the Men Who Built the World
- By: Sally Denton
- Narrated by: Bernadette Dunne
- Length: 11 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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The tale of the Bechtel family dynasty is a classic American business story. It begins with Warren A. "Dad" Bechtel, who led a consortium that constructed the Hoover Dam. From that auspicious start, the family and its eponymous company would go on to build the world, from the construction of airports in Hong Kong and Doha to pipelines and tunnels in Alaska and Europe to mining and energy operations around the globe.
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Your Liberal Bias is showing
- By Anonymous User on 03-29-18
By: Sally Denton
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The Fate of Africa
- A History of the Continent Since Independence
- By: Martin Meredith
- Narrated by: Fleet Cooper
- Length: 29 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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Martin Meredith has revised this classic history to incorporate important recent developments, including the Darfur crisis in Sudan, Robert Mugabe’s continued destructive rule in Zimbabwe, controversies over Western aid and exploitation of Africa’s resources, the growing importance and influence of China, and the democratic movement roiling the North African countries of Tunisia, Egypt, and Jordan.
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Africa: Land of Hope and Horror
- By Jeff on 03-08-14
By: Martin Meredith
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Trickle Down Tyranny
- Crushing Obama's Dreams of a Socialist America
- By: Michael Savage
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 10 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Trickle Down Tyranny is the single book you need to stop Obama's emerging dictatorship before we lose all of our constitutional, God-given rights. These pages show you the dangerous laws and powergrabs of the Obama administration… and what we can do to stop this leftist gang from seizing another term in office. Obama is transforming us into a second-class nation, with communists and Islamists given free rein to expand their power.
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Brings Clarity to the Obama charade.
- By Mrs. Stolle on 04-05-12
By: Michael Savage
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A Narco History
- How the United States and Mexico Jointly Created the “Mexican Drug War”
- By: Carmen Boullosa, Mike Wallace
- Narrated by: James Conlan
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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The term Mexican Drug War misleads. It implies that the ongoing bloodbath, which has now killed well over 100,000 people, is an internal Mexican affair. But this diverts attention from the US role in creating and sustaining the carnage. It's not just that Americans buy drugs from and sell weapons to Mexico's murderous cartels. It's that ever since the US prohibited the use and sale of drugs in the early 1900s, it has pressured Mexico into acting as its border enforcer - with increasingly deadly consequences.
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Interesting book, tricky pronunciation
- By Enrique on 12-24-18
By: Carmen Boullosa, and others
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Armageddon Averted
- The Soviet Collapse, 1970-2000
- By: Stephen Kotkin
- Narrated by: John Pruden
- Length: 5 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
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Combining historical and geopolitical analysis with an absorbing narrative, Kotkin draws upon extensive research, including memoirs by dozens of insiders and senior figures, to illuminate the factors that led to the demise of Communism and the USSR. The new edition puts the collapse in the context of the global economic and political changes from the 1970s to the present day. Kotkin creates a compelling profile of post-Soviet Russia.
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insightful
- By Anonymous User on 01-28-20
By: Stephen Kotkin
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Dealing with China
- An Insider Unmasks the New Economic Superpower
- By: Henry M. Paulson
- Narrated by: Kevin Stillwell
- Length: 18 hrs and 31 mins
- Unabridged
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When Hu Jintao, China's then vice president, came to visit the New York Stock Exchange and Ground Zero in 2002, he asked Hank Paulson to be his guide. It was a testament to the pivotal role that Goldman Sachs played in helping China experiment with private enterprise. In Dealing with China, the best-selling author of On the Brink draws on his unprecedented access to both the political and business leaders of modern China to answer several key questions.
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A Valuable Book on China
- By Michael Moore on 09-04-15
By: Henry M. Paulson
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The Dragon's Gift
- The Real Story of China in Africa
- By: Deborah Brautigam
- Narrated by: Pam Ward
- Length: 14 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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In the last few years, China's aid program has leapt out of the shadows. But China's tradition of secrecy about its aid fueled rumors and speculation, making it difficult to gauge the risks and opportunities provided by China's growing embrace. This well-timed book, by one of the world's leading experts, provides the first comprehensive account of China's aid and economic cooperation overseas. Deborah Brautigam tackles the myths and realities, explaining what the Chinese are doing, how they do it, how much aid they give, and how it all fits into their "going global" strategy.
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The Book Is Too Much To Digest
- By DING MING YING 丁明英 on 05-15-20
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Putin's People
- How the KGB Took Back Russia and Then Took On the West
- By: Catherine Belton
- Narrated by: Dugald Bruce-Lockhart
- Length: 18 hrs and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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In Putin’s People, the investigative journalist and former Moscow correspondent Catherine Belton reveals the untold story of how Vladimir Putin and the small group of KGB men surrounding him rose to power and looted their country. Delving deep into the workings of Putin’s Kremlin, Belton accesses key inside players to reveal how Putin replaced the freewheeling tycoons of the Yeltsin era with a new generation of loyal oligarchs, who in turn subverted Russia’s economy and legal system and extended the Kremlin's reach into the United States and Europe.
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very good
- By K on 07-15-20
By: Catherine Belton
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In "Black Africa: The Economic and Cultural Basis for a Federated State," Senegalese scholar Cheikh Anta Diop boldly calls for the unification of Black African nations. He argues that colonial borders fractured regions with shared cultures and economies, hindering progress. Diop proposes a unified state for greater global influence, emphasizing cultural revival and a common African language.
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So informative!
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American Kleptocracy
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A remarkable debut by one of America's premier young reporters on financial corruption, American Kleptocracy offers the first explosive investigation into how the United States of America built the largest illicit offshore finance system the world has ever known.
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Brilliant, timely, a cautionary tale
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The Ghosts of Langley
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The Ghosts of Langley is a provocative and panoramic new history of the Central Intelligence Agency that relates the agency's current predicament to its founding and earlier years, telling the story of the agency through the eyes of key figures in CIA history, including some of its most troubling covert actions around the world. It reveals how the agency, over seven decades, has resisted government accountability, going rogue in a series of highly questionable ventures that reach their apotheosis with secret overseas prisons and torture programs.
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Slanted
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Washington Bullets
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- Unabridged
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Washington Bullets is written in the best traditions of Marxist journalism and history-writing. It is a book of fluent stories, full of detail about US imperialism, but never letting the minutiae obscure the larger political point. It is a book that could easily have been a song of despair - a lament of lost causes; it is, after all, a roll call of butchers and assassins; of plots against people's movements and governments; of the assassinations of socialists, Marxists, communists all over the Third World by the country where liberty is a statue.
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The US empire needs to fall
- By Savannah Boyd on 04-28-24
By: Vijay Prashad
What listeners say about The Looting Machine
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Jeff Davis
- 02-14-20
One of the best I’ve listened to
Narrative was fantastic, and the book moves along at a very nice pace. While the content was troubling, it was an entertaining read nonetheless.
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- J. A. Barnaby
- 06-01-16
interesting but muddled
great narrator, interesting story, blames oil and mineral companies for intentionally looting africa but treats african politicians who squander community aid money from those same oil and mineral cos as victims of their own circumstance
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- K. Allen
- 08-01-24
Learned so much!
I disliked learning there is the dark side of international trade and finance. I liked learning about it and extrapolating explanations about things the Autor did not say. Why do we keep pumping in usd to African countries, why does the inequality and economic hardship still exist in African countries, and why??? This book answers them. It also explained, in plain English, a lot about colonialism that was hinted at in college classes but not clearly elucidated. This book was an easy listen and I highly recommend it.
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- Scott
- 07-29-18
Frightening, Fascinating, Fatiguing
When Tom Burgis tells us, at the start of this book, how he suffered a nervous breakdown, it's easy to see why. The sheer magnitude and hopelessness of the problem in Africa is almost beyond imagining.
This is an important book. One with which college students should be familiar. The wealth we enjoy is purchased on the misery of millions of Africans, and most of us remain blissfully unaware, if not totally unfeeling.
I had to take this book in pieces, it's so powerfully overwhelming. It has left me hating a system over which it seems I have no control whatever. Still, I'm glad to know the truth of it.
Listen to this book. Grover Gardner is the best narrator one can imagine, and the subject matter is of the utmost importance.
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9 people found this helpful
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- Steve Adams
- 08-25-24
A tale of greeed
The Looting Machine is a tale of many villains- both black and white. In spite of the riches of diamonds, petroleum and valuable metals and minerals, a handful of people make obscene profits while the majority of citizens barely get by.
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- maleye
- 08-06-18
A good overview of african continent history
The book start after the independence of most african countries and describe how corporate and warlord control africa's wealth and destiny.
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- Polk
- 07-25-22
Interesting
It's interesting to see how nations have stolen so much from African nations and how African leaders have sold out their countries.
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- Amazon Customer
- 07-20-24
Stolen resources
The resources that were extracted and stoles
from Africa and never replaced or recouped assets
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- Timothy Washington
- 02-04-20
Great book
This is an outline of the countries discussed. You'll have to dive a bit deeper to learn about all the legal crime that's robbing so many Africans of their own wealth. Very sobering.
1. Angola
2. DR Congo
3. Nigeria
4. China
5. Guinea
6. Niger
7. Ghana
8. Niger Delta (Nigerian oil province)
9. South Africa
10. Zimbabwe
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6 people found this helpful
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- mpalacioart
- 12-29-16
The unbelievable Africa wealth story
I've spent a lifetime loving all things Africa. This book points out just how off the mark I am. Africa and poverty are contradictions that becomes clear after reading Tom Burgis brilliant and brave book.
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