2007.07.15: July 15, 2007: Headlines: Figures: COS - Ecuador: Writing - Ecuador: Development: Economics: New York Times: Ecuador RPCV John Perkins is the author of the fabulously successful, and in some quarters revered, “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” which explains how a cabal of wicked men like him have enabled perfidious corporations to seize control of the planet
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2007.07.15: July 15, 2007: Headlines: Figures: COS - Ecuador: Writing - Ecuador: Development: Economics: New York Times: Ecuador RPCV John Perkins is the author of the fabulously successful, and in some quarters revered, “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” which explains how a cabal of wicked men like him have enabled perfidious corporations to seize control of the planet
Ecuador RPCV John Perkins is the author of the fabulously successful, and in some quarters revered, “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” which explains how a cabal of wicked men like him have enabled perfidious corporations to seize control of the planet
Perkins is the author of the fabulously successful, and in some quarters revered, “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” which explains how a cabal of wicked men like him have enabled perfidious corporations to seize control of the planet. Now, in a follow-up written not for crass financial gain but because he owes it to his fellow man, the promiscuously altruistic Perkins comes completely clean about the epochal role he has played in ruining life on earth. Author John Perkins served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Ecuador.
Ecuador RPCV John Perkins is the author of the fabulously successful, and in some quarters revered, “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” which explains how a cabal of wicked men like him have enabled perfidious corporations to seize control of the planet
Covert Ops
By JOE QUEENAN
Published: July 15, 2007
When discussing the movers and shakers who made the last third of the 20th century so special, people tend to rattle off names like Mao Zedong, Richard Nixon, Yasir Arafat, Henry Kissinger, Pol Pot and Ronald Reagan. Yet if John Perkins, the author of “The Secret History of the American Empire,” is to be believed, to that list must be added one more name: his own.
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Scott Buschkuhl
THE SECRET HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN EMPIRE
Economic Hit Men, Jackals, and the Truth About Global Corruption.
By John Perkins.
365 pp. Dutton. $25.95.
Perkins is the author of the fabulously successful, and in some quarters revered, “Confessions of an Economic Hit Man,” which explains how a cabal of wicked men like him have enabled perfidious corporations to seize control of the planet. Now, in a follow-up written not for crass financial gain but because he owes it to his fellow man, the promiscuously altruistic Perkins comes completely clean about the epochal role he has played in ruining life on earth.
After all, it was Perkins’s work for a Boston consulting firm that allowed nefarious multinational corporations to plunder Indonesia, Perkins’s acquisition of for-your-eyes-only population data from the mysterious “Dr. Asim” that enabled the Secret American Empire to take over Egypt, Perkins’s covert missions in Saudi Arabia that sealed Saddam Hussein’s fate, and Perkins’s invention of an ingenious payment system that led directly to the destruction of Bolivia’s economy. Thus, while the average person may think George W. Bush and Vladimir Putin are the ones who pull the strings on this planet, Perkins disabuses his readers of such naïveté. It is the economic hit men (E.H.M.’s) and their rough-and-tumble cousins, the corporate “jackals,” all of them in the employ of the “corporatocracy,” who decide who prospers, who starves, who lives, who dies. And, as is so often the case with deceptively omnipotent organizations, it is the Secret American Empire’s ability to dominate the world without having an official address or even a fax number that makes it so sinister, so powerful, so deadly.
This empire “is as ruthless as any in history,” Perkins writes. “It has enslaved more people and its policies and actions have resulted in more deaths than those under the imperial regimes of Rome, Spain, Portugal, France, England and Holland or at the hands of Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler, and yet its crimes go almost unnoticed, disguised in the robes of eloquent rhetoric.”
Perkins, like Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar, Napoleon Bonaparte and many other titans who irrevocably altered the course of history, has an unusual background. Son of a New Hampshire prep school teacher, he spent several years working for the Peace Corps in South America, apparently doing good things. Then, for reasons that seem to have something to do with making a lot of money, he made the unusual decision to go to work as a minion of Lucifer. He spent most of the 1970s and ’80s helping the evil corporatocracy that runs the Secret American Empire establish suzerainty over the Middle East, Southeast Asia, South America and Africa. Then one day, while visiting Tibet, he had a Saul of Tarsus-type conversion and realized that being an economic hit man, while not as bad as working as a jackal, was immoral. Since that time he has devoted every waking breath to exposing the machinations of the corporatocracy — whose errand boys include the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the news media — and making this a better planet.
So Perkins falls into the same category as St. Ignatius Loyola, St. Augustine and Charles Colson: He is an unimpeachable expert on virtue now because he was an expert on vice then. In sum, “The Secret History of the American Empire” is not so much a commercial product as a selfless gift to the American public. Indeed, Perkins comes across as so apologetic and self-abnegating that it’s surprising he even charges money for the book. It was probably his publisher’s idea. Corporatocratic swine.
Yet even though Perkins is perhaps the nicest person to come along since Alcuin of York, his book is not without its flaws. Because so many of the anecdotes and even the general outline of Perkins’s conspiracy theories date from the ’60s, a better title might have been “Rip Van Winkle Versus the Trilateral Commission.” The author also has a tendency to play fast and loose with the facts, skating over Castro’s myriad crimes in Cuba and Mao’s festive homicide in China. He is weak on American history, somehow confusing the monstrously inhospitable Iroquois tribes with the Little Sisters of the Poor. He describes Che Guevara’s death in ludicrously dramatic terms, when in fact this trendsetter, fashion plate and full-service psychopath came to a clownish end. He seems to believe that the C.I.A., having murdered the democratically elected presidents of Chile and Ecuador, then put Linda Tripp on the payroll in a plot to destroy Bill Clinton — and frankly, this sounds a bit far-fetched. He suggests that the first President Bush invaded Panama because Manuel Noriega had incriminating photos of George W. Bush snorting cocaine and engaging in kinky sex. If only history were this much fun!
Still, these lapses, oversights and harmless exaggerations do not detract from the author’s central message: I used to be an “infidel dog,” and the rest of you infidel dogs had better listen up. As he explains when detailing his pivotal role in the Secret American Empire’s annexation of the Middle East: “The Egyptians knew something that only a few of my countrymen comprehended: We used data like the projections Dr. Asim had provided to me for empire building. E.H.M. economic reports were far better weapons than crusader swords had ever been. Israeli bombs served their purpose, delivering havoc, raining down fear and compelling government officials to capitulate. But people like me were the real danger.”
Luckily for mankind, Perkins has retired from his job as an infidel dog and now works on the side of the angels.
Whew. That was close.
Joe Queenan writes for Barron’s, The Guardian, Men’s Health and The Weekly Standard
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Story Source: New York Times
This story has been posted in the following forums: : Headlines; Figures; COS - Ecuador; Writing - Ecuador; Development; Economics
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