Review: Terrible Humans, by Patrick Alley

Description
A small number of people, motivated by an insatiable greed for power and wealth, and backed by a pinstripe army of enablers (and sometimes real armies too), have driven the world to the brink of destruction. They are the super-villains of corruption and war, some with a power greater than nation state and the capacity to derail the world order. Propping
up their opulent lifestyles is a mess of crime, violence and deception on a monumental scale. But there is a fightback: small but fearless groups of brilliant undercover sleuths closing in on them, one step at a time.

In Terrible Humans, Patrick Alley, co-founder of Global Witness and the author of Very Bad People, introduces us to some of the world’s worst warlords, grifters and kleptocrats who can be found everywhere from presidential palaces to the board rooms of some of the world’s best known companies. Pitted against them, the book also follows the people
unravelling the deals, tracking the money and going undercover at great risk. From the oligarch charged with ordering the killing of an investigative journalist to the mercenary army seizing the natural resources of an entire African country, this is a whirlwind tour of the dark underbelly of the world’s super powerful and wickedly wealthy, and the daring investigators dragging them into the light.

My Review

Thanks to Octopus Books for sending me a copy of this book and to Anne Cater of Random Things Tours for organising this tour.

A well-written, informative and powerfully evocative recounting of investigations into terrible humans (and organisations), and the brave, resilient, and down-right clever people who expose them to the world for the cancerous, wealth and power grabbing, blights on humanity that they are. Alley recounts investigations by his own organisation, Global Witness, and those of other organisations, like Citizen Lab, Sea Shepard, and Wildlife Justice Commission, and covers wildlife crimes, private armies, the mining industry and the palm oil industry.

Whether they’re Russian private armies extending neo-colonialism back into Africa, Israeli mining tycoons taking control of another part of Africa and threatening everyone who exposes them, corrupt Brazilian palm oil organisations and the politicians they’ve bought destroying the Amazon, governments installing spyware on the phones of dissidents, or illegal fishing boats in the Antarctic, there will be an organisation, local people or journalists who will hunt them down and expose them for the pus-filled wounds on the skin of humanity that they are.

These terrible humans and their organisations don’t care about people, about the environment. The only thing they care about is wealth and power. They capture governments through corruption and greed, robbing communities of their resources, their land, their homes, their traditions and their lives. The connection between war, resources and greed is not new, but now it has the potential to kill us all through climate change.

Get angry. Get informed. Fight back. This book provides eight examples of the fight to expose these terrible humans, and resources to learn more. If you had the inkling that something wasn’t right, then this book will confirm your suspicions and give you a whole load of new ones. Support organisations that investigate and expose criminal actions by big business, like Global Witness, read as much as you can on the subject, boycott criminals and their customers.

Highly recommended.

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Author Biography

Patrick Alley is one of the three founders of Global Witness. Founded in 1993, Global
Witness has become one of the world’s leading investigative organisations dedicated to
routing out corruption & environmental and human rights abuses around the world, with
Patrick taking part in over 50 field investigations in South East Asia, Africa, Latin America
and Europe. Taking the findings to governments, lawmakers and into the boardrooms of multinational companies, Patrick and his colleagues have challenged the assumption that you can’t change things. Alongside his two co-founders, Patrick received the 2014 Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship. Global Witness were nominated for the 2003 Nobel
Peace Prize for their work exposing the murderous trade in Blood Diamonds.

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