Anybody read "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man"

[screembloodymurder]

by John Perkins? Heard him on talk radio and sounded interesting. Was it good?

[cthrumatrix]

1. awesome - NBC/GE would NEVER let Tweety have this guy on the air.

[hector459]

2. Frightfully good! A must read for anyone who deems themselves a

"thinking" person.

[applegrove]

3. I didn't read anything but an interview - but what he leaves out

is that even without meaning to cause dependence and bankruptcy and a loan sharking situation, donor nations have tied their aid to the poor buying a product from the rich country and this has hurt them a great deal.

Trust me - the poor and the development community have been talking about how "aid" could really hurt and stop a poor nation in its tracks: even if it was completely well-meaning.

And because tying aid to some product in the donor country is good for business in the donor country - it has been slow to be undone. But a debate about the structure of the donor/recipient relationship and the structure of the Aid has been going on for 40 years.

It wasn't just malice that put the poor into bankruptcy or dependence. It was also the best laid plans too.

And even a 'nice' country like Canada is still shifting its Aid from loans to grants. And it hears complaints like: but then how do we get to follow the money to be sure it is not being used wrongly?

[K-W]

4. Very interesting, very good, absolutely a must read.

It isnt every day that you get a primary source who was in the kind of positions he was in.

[musette_sf]

5. Just got it and am devouring it! (eom)

[Senior citizen]

6. Yes.

While morans are still touting economic development as a road out of poverty, the fact is, as Perkins clearly shows, that economic development causes poverty, or, at the very least, exacerbates it.

[Al-CIAda]

7. AUDIO-

Audio-
Guest: John Perkins, author of "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man"
Fri., December 10, 2004
Deadline Live w/Jack Blood

mp3's-
pt1- Interview starts approx. half way through
http://mp3.rbnlive.com/Blood/0412/20041210_Fri_JackBlood1.mp3
pt2-CIA sequence of Empire (economics, assasinations, torture, vote rigging, etc.) Naming names...vote rigging!
http://mp3.rbnlive.com/Blood/0412/20041210_Fri_JackBlood2.mp3

Realplayer RAM-
http://mp3.rbnlive.com/Blood/0412/20041210_Fri_JackBlood.ram

======

Democracy Now!
Tuesday, November 9th, 2004
Confessions of an Economic Hit Man: How the U.S. Uses Globalization to Cheat Poor Countries Out of Trillions
Listen to Segment || Download Show mp3      
Watch 128k stream       Watch 256k stream  
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We speak with John Perkins, a former respected member of the international banking community. In his book Confessions of an Economic Hit Man he describes how as a highly paid professional, he helped the U.S. cheat poor countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars by lending them more money than they could possibly repay and then take over their economies.
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John Perkins describes himself as a former economic hit man - a highly paid professional who cheated countries around the globe out of trillions of dollars.

20 years ago Perkins began writing a book with the working title, "Conscience of an Economic Hit Men."

Perkins writes, "The book was to be dedicated to the presidents of two countries, men who had been his clients whom I respected and thought of as kindred spirits - Jaime Roldós, president of Ecuador, and Omar Torrijos, president of Panama. Both had just died in fiery crashes. Their deaths were not accidental. They were assassinated because they opposed that fraternity of corporate, government, and banking heads whose goal is global empire. We Economic Hit Men failed to bring Roldós and Torrijos around, and the other type of hit men, the CIA-sanctioned jackals who were always right behind us, stepped in.

John Perkins goes on to write: "I was persuaded to stop writing that book. I started it four more times during the next twenty years. On each occasion, my decision to begin again was influenced by current world events: the U.S. invasion of Panama in 1980, the first Gulf War, Somalia, and the rise of Osama bin Laden. However, threats or bribes always convinced me to stop."


Excerpt:
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.

Con't-
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/11/09/1526251

[yorkiemommie1]

8. a definite MUST READ

I read "Power Elite" in college many years ago but this book by Perkins really opened my eyes. It's highly readable too, like a Grisham novel, but as I've stated before, sadly, it's non-fiction.

One of my coworkers, many years my junior, asked if I wanted to read "Confessions" and since I had an inkling that I would learn awful things, I was real scared to read it. He said, "Yes, you do want to read it". Now I will be buying a copy (from Barnes and Noble-
BLUE company) so that my daughter can read it too.

i think Amazon and B & N's online sites let you read a few pages.

[CHIMO]

9. Very Good

Once you start you will have a hard time to put it down. Found it a bit repetitive about 3/4's of the way through but still read everything from cover to cover. The Democracy Now interview above is a good interview. I believe that he was also on Ring of Fire.

Gives meaning to The Day of The Jackal. You will question all political events after reading.

[banana republican]

10. I bought a copy arround Xmas

and ended up giving it to my father in law. who intern gave to a friend of his who knows.....


I just got my second copy and will be starting to read it shortly.

[jsquared]

11. Very rhought-provoking and a real page-turner.

However, while he outlined the traps of the current globalist US-dominated capitalist economic system, he didn't address what would be a more humane alternative. (These developing countries weren't exactly panaceas before globalization heated up.) He definitely makes a good case about how the US and global economy may soon go to hell in a hand basket due to unstainable debt.