Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (Explains how we control & destroy countries)

[Guest guest]

My job, she said, was “to encourage world leaders to become part of a vast

network that promotes U.S. commercial interests. In the end, those leaders

become ensnared in a web of debt that ensures their loyalty. We can draw on them

whenever we desire—to satisfy our political, economic, or military needs. In

turn, they bolster their political positions by bringing industrial parks,

power plants, and airports to their people. The owners of U.S. engineering and

construction companies become fabulously wealthy.â€

Today we see the results of this system run amok. Executives at our most

respected companies hire people at near-slave wages to toil under inhuman

conditions in Asian sweatshops. Oil companies wantonly pump toxins down rain

forest

rivers, consciously killing people, animals, and plants and committing

genocide among ancient cultures. The pharmaceutical industry denies life-saving

medicines to millions of HIV-infected Africans. Twelve million families in our

own United States worry about their next meal. The energy industry creates an

Enron. The accounting industry creates an Andersen. The income ratio of the

one-fifth of the world’s population in the wealthiest countries to the

one-fifth in the poorest went from 30:1 in 1960 to 74:1 in 1995. The United

States

spends over $87 billion conducting a war in Iraq while the United Nations

estimates that for less than half that amount we could provide clean water,

adequate diets, sanitation services, and basic education to every person on the

planet.

And we wonder why terrorists attack us?

Some would blame our current problems on an organized conspiracy. I wish it

were so simple. Members of a conspiracy can be rooted out and brought to

justice. This system, however, is fueled by something far more dangerous than

conspiracy. It is driven not by a small band of men but by a concept that has

become accepted as gospel: the idea that all economic growth benefits humankind

and that the greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits. This

belief also has a corollary: that those people who excel at stoking the fires

of

economic growth should be exalted and rewarded, while those born at the

fringes are available for exploitation.

The concept is, of course, erroneous. We know that in many countries

economic growth benefits only a small portion of the population and may in fact

result in increasingly desperate circumstances for the majority. This effect is

reinforced by the corollary belief that the captains of industry who drive

this system should enjoy a special status, a belief that is the root of many of

our current problems and perhaps is also the reason that conspiracy theories

abound. When men and woman are rewarded for greed, greed becomes a corrupting

motivator. When we equate the gluttonous consumption of the earth's

resources with a status approaching sainthood, when we teach our children to

emulate

people who live unbalanced lives, and when we define huge sections of the

population as subservient to an elite minority, we ask for trouble. And we get

it.

In their drive to advance the global empire, corporations, banks, and

governments (collectively the corporatocracy) use their financial and political

muscle to ensure that our schools, businesses, and the media support both the

fallacious concept and its corollary. They have brought us to a point where our

global culture is a monstrous machine that requires exponentially increasing

amounts of fuel and maintenance, so much so that in the end it will have

consumed everything in sight and will be left with no choice but to devour

itself.

The corporatocracy is not a conspiracy, but its members do endorse common

values and goals. One of corporatocracy's most important functions is to

perpetuate and continually expand and strengthen the system. The lives of those

who

“make it,†and their accouterments—their mansions, yachts, and private

jets—

are presented as models to inspire us all to consume, consume, consume.

Every opportunity is taken to convince us that purchasing things is our civic

duty, that pillaging the earth is good for the economy and therefore serves our

higher interests. People like me are paid outrageously high salaries to do

the system's bidding. If we falter, a more malicious form of hit man, the

jackal, steps to the plate. And if the jackal fails, then the job falls to the

military.

This book is the confession of a man who, back when he was an EHM, was part

of a relatively small group. People who play similar roles are more abundant

now. They have more euphemistic titles, and they walk the corridors of

Monsanto, General Electric, Nike, General Motors, Wal-Mart, and nearly every

other

major corporation in the world. In a very real sense, Confessions of an

Economic Hit Man is their story, as well as mine.

It is your story too, the story of your world and mine, of the first truly

global empire. History tells us that unless we modify this story, it is

guaranteed to end tragically. Empires never last. Every one of them has failed

terribly. They destroy many cultures as they race toward greater domination,

and

then they themselves fall. No country or combination of them can thrive in

the long term by exploiting others.

This book was written so that we may take heed and remold our story. I am

certain that when enough of us become aware of how we are being exploited by

the economic engine that creates an insatiable appetite for the world's

resources and that results in systems that foster slavery, we will no longer

tolerate it. We will reassess our role in a world where a few swim in riches

and the

majority drown in poverty, pollution, and violence. We will commit ourselves

to navigating a course toward compassion, democracy, and social justice for

all.

Admitting to a problem is the first step toward finding a solution.

Confessing a sin is the beginning of redemption. Let this book, then, be the

start of

our salvation. Let it inspire us to new levels of dedication, and drive us

to realize our dream for balanced and honorable societies.

Excerpt from the book:

In 2003, I departed Quito in a Subaru Outback and headed for Shell on a

mission that was like no other I had ever accepted. I was hoping to end a war I

had helped create. As is the case with so many things we EHMs must take

responsibility for, it is a war that is virtually unknown anywhere outside the

country where it is fought. I was on my way to meet with the Shuars, the

Kichwas,

and their neighbors the Achuars, the Zaparos, and the Shiwiars—tribes

determined to prevent our oil companies from destroying their homes, families,

and

lands, even if it means they must die in the process. For them, this is a war

about the survival of their children and cultures, while for us it is about

power, money, and natural resources. It is one part of the struggle for world

domination and the dream of a few greedy men, global empire.

That is what we EHMs do best: we build a global empire. We are an elite

group of men and women who utilize international financial organizations to

foment conditions that make other nations subservient to the corporatocracy

running our biggest corporations, our government, and our banks. Like our

counterparts in the Mafia, EHMs provide favors. These take the form of loans to

develop infrastructure —electric generating plants, highways, ports,

airports, or

industrial parks. A condition of such loans is that engineering and

construction companies from our own country must build all these projects. In

essence,

most of the money never leaves the United States; it is simply transferred

from banking offices in Washington to engineering offices in New York, Houston,

or San Francisco.

Despite the fact that the money is returned almost immediately to

corporations that are members of the corporatocracy (the creditor), the

recipient

country is required to pay it all back, principal plus interest. If an EHM is

completely successful, the loans are so large that the debtor is forced to

default on its payments after a few years. When this happens, then like the

Mafia

we demand our pound of flesh. This often includes one or more of the

following: control over United Nations votes, the installation of military

bases, or

access to precious resources such as oil or the Panama Canal. Of course, the

debtor still owes us the money—and another country is added to our global

empire.....................

However—and this is a very large caveat—if we fail, an even more sinister

breed steps in, ones we EHMs refer to as the jackals, men who trace their

heritage directly to those earlier empires. The jackals are always there,

lurking

in the shadows. When they emerge, heads of state are overthrown or die in

violent “accidents.â€10 And if by chance the jackals fail, as they failed in

Afghanistan and Iraq, then the old models resurface. When the jackals fail,

young Americans are sent in to kill and to die.

As I passed the monster, that hulking mammoth wall of gray concrete rising

from the river, I was very conscious of the sweat that soaked my clothes and

of the tightening in my intestines. I headed on down into the jungle to meet

with the indigenous people who are determined to fight to the last man in

order to stop this empire I helped create, and I was overwhelmed with feelings

of

guilt. How, I asked myself, did a nice kid from rural New Hampshire ever get

into such a dirty business?

Continued at _http://www.economichitman.com/pages/bookpages/excerpt2.html_

(http://www.economichitman.com/pages/bookpages/excerpt2.html)

For a site about what you can do and living in a socially responsible

manner, go to:

_http://www.johnperkins.org/More%20Information.htm_

(http://www.johnperkins.org/More%20Information.htm)