OvercommuniKate’s Reviews > Cobalt Red: How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives > Status Update

I find the information not included to be odd (eg women couldn't open a bank account until 2016). I thought the hypothetical of the 15 year old girl's ancestors to be powerful but also tasteless. Also, if he'd described soldier payment and the diamond trade history, this later section would make more sense. Trafficking, forced labor, and funding terrorism been part of DRC soldier and mercenary work for a long time.

I feel like if this more chronological you could see Leopold's hiding behind business org in parallel to govt hiding behind these mining orgs but with the structure it sounds like the Belgians left and it's just the Chinese but that's not accurate. Also, the interview with 3 college students about their President isn't really hard hitting journalism compared to his other interviews.

Okay we finally got a mention of Umicore's involvement in the civil war at 14% but then he leaves off with a stinger about the possible murder of Dag Hammarskjold (w/o mention by name) before getting into the fauna on his trip out there to the mines. Also we keep flip flopping between his time when Joseph or Felix as president which is confusing. WHY IS THIS ORGANIZED LIKE THIS. Why not chronological?

Author keeps mentioning the Paris Agreement but I'm not sure this is the accelerator he says it is.

Okay we get a touch of a reference to Umicore but not by name. It's still really early but I'm finding it frustrating we're not going chronologically from the mining history of cobalt which has been mined in Katagna since 1914. I guess this is a question of expose v history.

Ya, in further reflection I wish this was more history focused because IMO the Congo crisis can be traced to Union Minière du Haut-Katanga moving for civil war and they MINED COBALT and still exist as Umicore. Okay. Maybe we will discuss this, I've got a bunch of book left. But why not start at the beginning?

I'm hopeful we're going to circle back to why these human right coalitions are just PR. Felt like we breezed through some of this stuff, assuming b/c first chapter.