Dan Gertler Earns Billions as Mine Deals Leave Congo Poorest Nation

[Flaxbee]

Source: Bloomberg.com

Dan Gertler’s bearded face lights up as he looks out the helicopter window. Below, an installation twice the size of Monaco rises from a clearing in the central African forest, where it transforms ore mined from the ochre earth into sheets of copper.

“Look at it, look at it,” the Israeli billionaire, 38, shouts through the headset above the thrum of rotors. “This is what life is all about,” Gertler says as the chopper lands in the scorching, dry afternoon heat of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

“Everyone comes with dreams and illusions and promises. Everyone wants quick deals. They don’t want to invest. We are real.”

Wearing a black suit by French fashion house Zilli, ritual white tassels hanging off both hips and a black-velvet yarmulke, Gertler hops out into the dust of Mutanda, a mine controlled by his partner, Glencore International Plc (GLEN), that holds cobalt and some of the highest-grade copper in the world, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its January issue.

Read more: http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-12-05/gertler-earns-billions-as-mine-deals-leave-congo-poorest.html

[Canuckistanian]

1. Bilions of dollars being extracted

Yet the people of the Congo see none of it, besides Kabila.

And yet Gertler seems to have no problem with that.

It's people like him that cause mass poverty in 3rd world countries. He should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity.

[Flaxbee]

3. I love it that he goes home every weekend to pray to his god; whatever god it is that

he thinks approves of this depravity.

[jsr]

2. About time he got some exposure

[Earth_First]

4. This guy is a fucking parasite...

A parasite to capitalism and a parasite to environmentalist/conservation efforts.

[LanternWaste]

5. I learned about the abhorrent history of the Congo from the oddest of places

I learned about the abhorrent history of the Congo from the oddest of places. One or two years ago, I received the Young Indiana Jones TV series set on DVD. Each of the 20 or so episodes comes with three to four documentaries that relate to that episode in one way or another.

King Leopold of Belgium was for all intent and purposes, as bad to the Congo as Hitler was to Poland... and that's not hyperbole; and it's gotten little better since.

[Journeyman]

6. Mark Twain: "King Leopold's Soliloquy". . .

http://msuweb.montclair.edu/~furrg/i2l/kls.html


Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness

http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/ConDark.html


Hannah Arendt: The Origins of Totalitarianism (Part Two: Imperialism)

http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Origins_of_Totalitarianism.html?id=8f2y0F2wzLoC

An even worse case is of course that of Leopold II of Belgium, responsible for the blackest pages in the history of Africa. "There was only one man who could be accused of the outrages which reduced the native population of the Congo from between 20 to 40 million in 1890 to 8,500,000 in 1911 -- Leopold II."

[eppur_se_muova]

7. Book recs -- "King Leopold's Ghost", "Scramble for Africa"

http://www.powells.com/biblio/2-9780618001903-8

http://www.powells.com/biblio/7-9780349104492-2 (I actually read the first ed.)

[heaven05]

8. no comment