April 11, 2011

How America Took Over The World

They used guys like John Perkins.

I am both fascinated and appalled at the actions of the USA and people like John. Thankfully, John broke cover and started to tell us about these nefarious operations and without him, we would be in the dark.

Here is a snippet from an interview, and below, a link to John's site. I will buy the book but I suggest you do the same, or get it from a library. As Sun Tzu once said, "Before you can defeat the enemy, you must know his strengths and his weaknesses". This book will help in that regard.

~snippet~

"AMY GOODMAN: John Perkins joins us now in our firehouse studio. Welcome to Democracy Now!

JOHN PERKINS: Thank you, Amy. It’s great to be here.

AMY GOODMAN: It’s good to have you with us. Okay, explain this term, “economic hit man,” e.h.m., as you call it.

JOHN PERKINS: Basically what we were trained to do and what our job is to do is to build up the American empire. To bring -- to create situations where as many resources as possible flow into this country, to our corporations, and our government, and in fact we’ve been very successful. We’ve built the largest empire in the history of the world. It's been done over the last 50 years since World War II with very little military might, actually. It's only in rare instances like Iraq where the military comes in as a last resort. This empire, unlike any other in the history of the world, has been built primarily through economic manipulation, through cheating, through fraud, through seducing people into our way of life, through the economic hit men. I was very much a part of that.

AMY GOODMAN: How did you become one? Who did you work for?

JOHN PERKINS: Well, I was initially recruited while I was in business school back in the late sixties by the National Security Agency, the nation's largest and least understood spy organization; but ultimately I worked for private corporations. The first real economic hit man was back in the early 1950's, Kermit Roosevelt, the grandson of Teddy, who overthrew of government of Iran, a democratically elected government, Mossadegh’s government who was Time's magazine person of the year; and he was so successful at doing this without any bloodshed -- well, there was a little bloodshed, but no military intervention, just spending millions of dollars and replaced Mossadegh with the Shah of Iran. At that point, we understood that this idea of economic hit man was an extremely good one. We didn't have to worry about the threat of war with Russia when we did it this way. The problem with that was that Roosevelt was a C.I.A. agent. He was a government employee. Had he been caught, we would have been in a lot of trouble. It would have been very embarrassing. So, at that point, the decision was made to use organizations like the C.I.A. and the N.S.A. to recruit potential economic hit men like me and then send us to work for private consulting companies, engineering firms, construction companies, so that if we were caught, there would be no connection with the government.

AMY GOODMAN: Okay. Explain the company you worked for.

JOHN PERKINS: Well, the company I worked for was a company named Chas. T. Main in Boston, Massachusetts. We were about 2,000 employees, and I became its chief economist. I ended up having fifty people working for me. But my real job was deal-making. It was giving loans to other countries, huge loans, much bigger than they could possibly repay. One of the conditions of the loan–let's say a $1 billion to a country like Indonesia or Ecuador–and this country would then have to give ninety percent of that loan back to a U.S. company, or U.S. companies, to build the infrastructure–a Halliburton or a Bechtel. These were big ones. Those companies would then go in and build an electrical system or ports or highways, and these would basically serve just a few of the very wealthiest families in those countries. The poor people in those countries would be stuck ultimately with this amazing debt that they couldn’t possibly repay. A country today like Ecuador owes over fifty percent of its national budget just to pay down its debt. And it really can’t do it. So, we literally have them over a barrel. So, when we want more oil, we go to Ecuador and say, “Look, you're not able to repay your debts, therefore give our oil companies your Amazon rain forest, which are filled with oil.” And today we're going in and destroying Amazonian rain forests, forcing Ecuador to give them to us because they’ve accumulated all this debt. So we make this big loan, most of it comes back to the United States, the country is left with the debt plus lots of interest, and they basically become our servants, our slaves. It's an empire. There's no two ways about it. It’s a huge empire. It's been extremely successful."


Link to John's site.

Google "Confessions of an Economic Hitman" and you should find some YouTube clips as well.

How little we know.....

CR.

Tip of the beret to poster Bodge on TPUC. Thanks mate!

14 comments:

Steven said...

It sure is a good book.

Here is a recent interview with JP.

Steven said...

D'oh!

Here's the interview

http://www.redicecreations.com/radio/2011/02/RIR-110217.php

Captain Ranty said...

Thanks Steven.

I've bookmarked the site and will watch the vids tonight.

CR.

Sue said...

OK. I'm going mental reading all about "conspiracy theories" the entire weekend. From some inane crap of Ickes that we are being taken over by reptilian aliens to this?

What do you make of it Capt? (Not the reptiles of course, because I'm not that crazy :)

Anonymous said...

Good read. Certainly an eye-opener with Interesting stuff but his end solution goes a bit off track for my liking.

Still I'll be interested to hear your opinion after you've read the book.

Captain Ranty said...

Sue,

I would go mental if I read everything out there.

The piece in your link appears to have been written by a deeply religious person. Some of it is sensible, and other sections could have been written by someone high on hallucinogenics.

Take this paragraph:

"She has given an O.B.E. to Joanne “Jo” Rowling (J. K. Rowling), who promotes witchcraft, thus herself condoning the promotion of witchcraft, and the poisoning of the minds of the nation and its children."

Now, I have read all the Harry Potter books. I read the earlier ones to my boys. I believed them to be works of fiction, and the reason I liked them was vaguely altruistic: they got kids reading. I believe (very strongly) that every child (and every adult) should be able to read, and if possible, enjoy it. Not once in all of JK Rowlings books did I see any attempt to coerce me or my kids into witchcraft.

If you took every word of this this guys writing at face value, you imagine that the Harry Potter books weren't fiction, but instruction manuals.

Just for fun, I fashioned a wand out of a bit of Rowan tree. I had no dragon piss to use as my wands "core" but still, all attempts to make my dog levitate, and my one rash effort to "Obliviate" Mrs R, failed miserably. My cat also refused to be "Stupified". "Fuck off", she meowed at me.

I did manage to get blood out of a stone once but on closer inspection it turned out to be a piece of sponge I had used to stop a cut on my thumb. I was bitterly disappointed.

Lesson? If it sounds too fantastic, it usually is.

CR.

Captain Ranty said...

George,

I'll give it a go and report back.

I have seen a few of his videos and he comes over as genuine, so that helps a bit.

CR.

Sue said...

I know you're right, I just had to confirm it ;) Thank you.

Blimey, my head!

I'm a sucker for magical books. I love all of them. Nothing like a bit of escapism for the kids and the adults reading them. I did the same with mine.

Anonymous said...

Nice one Cap'n.

Harbinger

Captain Ranty said...

Sue,

We now know we live in a fictional world. It's all fabricated, from what you buy, the money you buy it with, to the nonsensical idea that we "own" anything, to being run like puppets on a string by puppets on a string, to even being fictional ourselves being run by corporate fictions.

Nowt wrong with fiction. I need to escape from this shite as well. I travel the world (and off-world) for an hour or so before I hit the light switch every night.

Tonight I am heading back to ancient Rome.

I believe it keeps me sane.

CR.

Captain Ranty said...

H,

You never cease to amaze me.

I fully expected you to slate me by saying Perkins was a plant!

CR.

kitler said...

That would be the same JK Rowling who gave a million quid to the Labour party and is about to write a book for the lovely McCanns.

Captain Ranty said...

The very same.

I despise her politics but don't forget, most of the books were written before she resorted to fuckwittery with the Labour party.

I mean, how stupid was she? Very few rats jump ON to a sinking ship.

CR.

James Higham said...

Those companies would then go in and build an electrical system or ports or highways, and these would basically serve just a few of the very wealthiest families in those countries. The poor people in those countries would be stuck ultimately with this amazing debt that they couldn’t possibly repay. A country today like Ecuador owes over fifty percent of its national budget just to pay down its debt.

Oh the lies.