Siddharth Kara

What would you give up to save your child from being trafficked into slave labor? Or to save your sister from sexual assault? Or to keep your spouse safe from deadly working conditions? Your cell phone? Your laptop? Your robot vacuum? Your electric car?
70% of rechargeable batteries rely on enslaved children. There is no 'clean' pipeline for cobalt. Exploited and oppressed, sick and injured, paid less than $2 day (half that for women & kids). Kids as young as eight are expected to mine show more cobalt from dawn to dusk. Women miners are frequent victims of assault and rape. Men, women and children are exposed to deadly levels of radiation and toxic ores. So we can take a selfie.
American citizens still encourage and condone slavery. Lincoln may have freed the slaves in the USA but corporations now use slaves where you and I can't see the horror and disgrace for ourselves up close and personal. And that gives the end-users like us plausible deniability. We can say we didn't know as if that exempts us from culpability when we buy all the cheap goods made in 3rd world countries reliant on abused, underpaid, malnourished, slave labor.
So the DRC and its people have been exploited for centuries by greedy bastards from other countries. But we demand it. You & I. Because everyone likes a good deal. And corporate flaks mouth corporate propaganda to let each of us pretend that we each have a clean slate. We don't. show less

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: From Pulitzer finalist and New York Times bestselling author of Cobalt Red: A notorious slave ship incident that led to the abolition of slavery in the UK and sparked the US abolitionist movement

In late October 1780, a slave ship set sail from the Netherlands, bound for Africa’s Windward and Gold Coasts, where it would take on its human cargo. The Zorg (a Dutch word meaning “care”) was one of thousands of such ships, but the harrowing events that show more ensued on its doomed journey were unique.

After reaching Africa, the Zorg was captured by a privateer and came under British command. With a new captain and crew, the ship was crammed with 442 slaves and departed in 1781 for Jamaica. But a series of unpredictable weather events and mistakes in navigation left the ship drastically off course and running out of water. So a proposition was put forth: Save the crew and the most valuable of the slaves—by throwing dozens of people, starting with women and children, overboard.

What followed was a fascinating legal drama in England’s highest court that turned the brutal calculus of slavery into front-page news. The case of the Zorg catapulted the nascent anti-slavery movement from a minor evangelical cause to one of the most consequential moral campaigns in history—sparking the abolitionist movement in both England and the young United States.

Siddharth Kara utilizes primary-source research, gripping storytelling, and painstaking investigation to uncover the Zorg’s journey, the lives and fates of the slaves on board, and the mysterious identity of the abolitionist who finally revealed the truth of what happened on the ship.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Whistleblowers are reviled by the greedy capitalists because they interfere with the satiation of the actually evil levels of greed that propel acts like these in the book.

There is a reason y'all's religions, one and all, condemn greed. Not that it ever has the tiniest effect on most "religious" people's behavior, nor the behavior of those who claim they work for the common good, nor really any other human being I've ever known. Yes, before some annoying twidgee says it, I include myself.

Like Cobalt Red (q.v.), Author Kara knows exactly what will give you nightmares, and deploys that thing in search of your conscience. It's history, not current events, I hear you echoing my bleat of self-justification. Back to Cobalt Red you should go.

The relief from guilt is the sheer outrageousness of the court case fought over this murderous event. It's something that I definitely see making a huge splash in the press of the day. It would be a Frontline documentary today. In any event, it is historical record, so there is no escaping the ugly truth:
We have known the facts of slavery for generations and done the bare minimum to end it, more to ameliorate our feelings of greed and guilt than because we see the enslaved as real people.

Sleep tight. show less

Rating: 5* of five

The Publisher Says: The revelatory New York Times and Publishers Weekly bestseller, shortlisted for the Financial Times Best Business Book of the Year Award.

An unflinching investigation reveals the human rights abuses behind the Congo’s cobalt mining operation―and the moral implications that affect us all.

Cobalt Red is the searing, first-ever exposé of the immense toll taken on the people and environment of the Democratic Republic of the Congo by cobalt mining, as told show more through the testimonies of the Congolese people themselves. Activist and researcher Siddharth Kara has traveled deep into cobalt territory to document the testimonies of the people living, working, and dying for cobalt. To uncover the truth about brutal mining practices, Kara investigated militia-controlled mining areas, traced the supply chain of child-mined cobalt from toxic pit to consumer-facing tech giants, and gathered shocking testimonies of people who endure immense suffering and even die mining cobalt.

Cobalt is an essential component to every lithium-ion rechargeable battery made today, the batteries that power our smartphones, tablets, laptops, and electric vehicles. Roughly 75 percent of the world’s supply of cobalt is mined in the Congo, often by peasants and children in sub-human conditions. Billions of people in the world cannot conduct their daily lives without participating in a human rights and environmental catastrophe in the Congo. In this stark and crucial book, Kara argues that we must all care about what is happening in the Congo―because we are all implicated.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Remember King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in Colonial Africa? More than a quarter-century later, that story of exploitation and abuse of human beings from the vilest era of European colonialism had no effect on the world. Handwringing and smug self-assurance that we would never, it can't happen again, are herewith disproved. We did; it did.

And not many of "us" care, or act like we care, or say or do anything to indicate to our corporate masters that we disapprove. After reading this book, maybe a few will take some time to hunt up contact details for their pad/laptop/cellphone manufacturer and let them know...
...
...well, it's pretty much useless to finish that sentence. Siddharth Kara writes his fingers to the bone, he goes hot miserable places, and he comes and tells us the impassioned truth about how our "clean" energy devices depend on the slave labor of millions...so does every plateful of food you eat...and we go full Joker mode...

...and move on.

After reading Author Kana's interviewee who interrupts him to finish the sentence, "...you work in horrible conditions..." with

"No, we work in our graves."

And you and I sit here and stare at our cobalt-powered screens. show less

This book is Siddharth Kara’s exposé of human rights abuses taking place in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) with respect to cobalt mining and the exploitation of people at the bottom of the supply chain. Cobalt is used in rechargeable batteries, which is increasingly in demand to power our electronics. Tech giants and governments are making huge profits and claiming that their supply chains are clean, but as Kara’s evidence shows, this is not the truth. Kara traveled to the Congo show more to see first-hand what was going on. He saw the open mining pits, the tunnels, and the children working in the mines. Safety measures are basically non-existent. Workers regularly die or are maimed in tunnel collapses. There are no controls in place to prevent toxic dumping. Debt servitude and forced labor is common. Workers are paid the equivalent of a dollar or two per day. Graft is everywhere. He interviewed people in mining operations and governmental officials, as well as the artisan miners and their families, and has assembled a compelling case for action.

The author summarizes the sad history of the country, which is replete with human rights abuses, starting with King Leopold of Belgium (if you want to read more about the colonial history, I can highly recommend King Leopold’s Ghost by Adam Hochschild). Except for a brief glimmer of hope after the first independent elections, the post-colonial government has included a series of despots, who enrich themselves at the expense of the country by selling mineral rights to foreign nations (the latest is China).

To add to these problems, families must pay for their children to go to school, and wages are so low that most cannot afford it. The children end up working in the mines to supplement their family’s income. I think the author has made the case for involvement by international organizations and the tech companies profiting from this shameful abuse should take some responsibility for alleviating suffering of workers at the source of their supply chain. It is a shame that the population of DRC does not benefit from the richness of their country’s resources. As a journalist, Kara points out that there are no easy answers, but awareness is the first step, and I think he has done an excellent job of bringing these horrible abuses to the attention of a wider audience, where more pressure can be applied to those who can do something about it. show less