A first-rate (mis)adventure writer

‘Even Silence Has An End’: Ingrid Betancourt with her sister at a concert for liberty in Paris, July, 20, 2008. Julien Hekimian/WireImage/Getty Images

EVEN SILENCE HAS AN END
Ingrid Betancourt

During a quixotic campaign for the Colombian presidency in February 2002, Ingrid Betancourt—Green Oxygen party founder, elected senator, bestselling author and anti-corruption whistle-blower—was kidnapped by FARC rebels and spirited off to the jungle. Her account of the 6½ years she spent in captivity is, even at 528 pages, riveting: there are anacondas, piranhas, food shortages, forced marches through the rainforest, sadistic captors, life-threatening illnesses—and the growing certainty that she is both too valuable a pawn for the rebels and too inconvenient an activist for the government ever to be freed.

To evade detection, FARC commanders kept hostages on the move, sometimes cramming them into tiny barracks, and other times forcing them to sleep in the open. Betancourt escaped several times but was always recaptured, and eventually chained by the neck to a tree. But as she makes clear, she was not well-liked by the other hostages, several of whom rushed to press with damning memoirs accusing her of “haughtiness” and “selfishness.”

While Betancourt doesn’t address these charges directly, she writes that many hostages—who included fellow politicians and three American military contractors—were envious of the international attention her plight attracted. Certainly, meanness rather than grace emerged under pressure: cliques formed, captives began snitching on (and filching from) each other, and bitter squabbling and schadenfreude were the norm. Betancourt doesn’t pretend she was above any of this. “I, too, had run up to the stewpot in the hope of having a better piece . . . We were all alike, entangled in our ugly little pettiness.”

It’s easy to believe that in the jungle, Betancourt was a self-important pain in the ass at times. But in this surprisingly a political and tightly circumscribed memoir—there’s no discussion of her post-rescue divorce, or her ex-husband’s nasty kiss-and-tell book—she also proves herself to be a first-rate (mis)adventure writer. This jungle book is an indelible portrait of hell—which, as Sartre suggested, does turn out to be other people.
- KATE FILLION

ETHICAL OIL: THE CASE FOR CANADA’S OIL SANDS
Ezra Levant

In recent months, Alberta has woken up to the fact that its energy-intensive oil sands operations, though an economic boon for the province—indeed the entire country—are fast becoming a PR disaster. With U.S. environmental groups charging that the oil patch is “Canada’s Avatar Sands,” the provincial government has wisely decided to go on the offensive. It’s running ads in New York’s Times Square that tout the desirability of importing oil from a friendly, responsible neighbour committed to investing in pollution-reducing technologies. A similar argument is delivered, not without bombast, by conservative author and former Western Standard magazine publisher Ezra Levant in his new book Ethical Oil. Levant suggests the true cost of oil shouldn’t be limited to calculations that include greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants, but also the blood on the hands of the rogues’ gallery of autocratic regimes that account for much of the world’s current oil production. “On every key measure, from women’s rights, to gay rights, to Aboriginal rights, to the sharing of oil wealth equitably among workers, to environmental protection, Canada is hands down the most ethical exporter of oil in the world,” Levant argues. He also questions the motives of anti-oil-sands groups, arguing convincingly that Canada, with its commitment to free speech, is a much easier place for activists to stage a credible-looking campaign than in places like Saudi Arabia or Iran, creating a perverse situation where the most conscientious of the bunch is subjected to the worst scrutiny. However, Levant seems to dismiss the possibility that more is expected of Canada precisely because of its sturdy democracy and global reputation. Nor does he spend nearly as much effort challenging the promises and claims made by Ottawa, the province and big oil companies, which stand to reap huge rewards from the billions being invested in northern Alberta. It’s a potentially troubling omission given BP’s recent spill, an environmental disaster that appears to have been the direct result of lax government oversight and reckless corporate decision-making.
- CHRIS SORENSEN